I used to hate CF until I came across the fusebox pattern/framework[1]. I think they were some of the first to draw up a sane architecture for "template" languages (cf, php, asp, jsp etc).
Much like a book I picked up on sale about asp[2] - it really drove home the point that a programming language really needs to be terrible before it is the main problem - rather than how you use it. See also xmlhttprequest/Ajax and "Javascript - the good parts".
I didn’t use CF professionally until 2000 and started with fusebox. I think fusebox was a good idea, but still CF sucked to use as a developer (me comparing it to cgi, php, asp, java).
I stopped using CF in 2001, but the fusebox ideas stuck with me as I worked with other web frameworks like struts, spring, other mvc stuff.
Much like a book I picked up on sale about asp[2] - it really drove home the point that a programming language really needs to be terrible before it is the main problem - rather than how you use it. See also xmlhttprequest/Ajax and "Javascript - the good parts".
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180928051133/http://fusebox.or... and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusebox_(programming)
[2] "Designing Active Server Pages" 2000, O'Reilly Media