Of course you can. I can give you one: mine! :) A dozen countries, in the top 10 in every one of them, etc.
I'm not saying "i've seen CF and I don't like it", I'm saying we use it at work and I still wouldn't recommend it.

By the way, try the documentation for previous versions. And before you can say "CF don't do that, because it is documented otherwise", try it. We've seen many non-documented behaviours, even when the documentation says precisely that CF doesn't do that. Or try to change the JVM in your server. Some months ago we discovered a hidden bug in our code that the same server with another jre ignored. Same java version, different build.

Large companies are really slow to change its systems. CF was an option (a valid one) several years ago. With CF 5 or so. Later, it was still better to adjust your CF code to upgrade (even with the license costs) than to migrate everything in another language. Now, we're paying that years ago we decided to wait. Now it seems to cost too much, so I think we're stuck with CF for at least 2009. But not a single developer in my company likes CF. We disagree on to which other language/platform we should migrate, but nobody prefers CF.

I'm sure, US goverment pays for more CF projects than Java or .Net ones. Yep. Really sure. And new ones, of course. Come on, we've all seen goverment still paying for web developments with CGIs.
Tell me large WEB companies use it. Tell me Facebook is migrating to CF, or Twitter, or even google. I'm not saying they prefer PHP (Google doesn't develop in php), but none of them uses CF. In fact, I think in web terms we're one of the biggest websites using CF. And we don't like it :)

re: I assume PHP has an IDE w/ autocomplete?
Yes. Many. For years now. My favourite is Zend Studio (many folks I know doesn't like the new Studio for Eclipse, i do), but there are free plugins for eclipse with that feature and much more.
I hope Bolt is as good as you say. As I'll be using CF for at least a year more, it would be great for me. CFEclipse is so buggy it hurts, and Dreamweaver is not an effective IDE for me.

Use a custom tag instead of a function => more than 10x slower.
One of the biggest performance boost we had in our last workshop was changing a custom tag for include_once to a function. It was amazing. We had 3 days of intense emergency workshop to improve the performance of the website, mainly because of the CFCs overhead in the new architecture (partially solved with CF8), and that one was one of the best moves. In 3 days of really intense work, we cut down 40% the time per script, without any architectural changes: only playing around with CFML features, supposed to be the same. That kind of crap in a serious language, when it's not documented and you have to believe in small independent studies and perform your own tests to get shocked about how it really works... that's something I can complain about.

As for the rest I think my last comment covers it up. ColdFusion seems to be designed for web designers who needs to code a bit, for web pages instead of web apps or large web sites. It's ok, there are many languages designed that way. I usually don't like them, as I find many leaks that cancel its advantages out.
I'm sure you can develop a simple web page really fast with CF. Even a small website. I'm also sure it's not the best option out there, and its downsides in scalability and others outrank its advantages

Actually I want to make a final comment.
I think coldfusion was a valid option a while ago. It painfully and slowly died and now, when the competitors are miles ahead, Adobe seems to be making an effort to impulse it. Good luck. I mean it. It seems that I will suffer CF more, so any development will be more than welcome.
I also think its much more oriented to designers who needs to code some dynamic content than other languages. Pretty much like the original PHP target, when it was called Personal Home Page.
Nowadays I wouldn't use it to develop a serious/large website or web application. Many reasons, not only what i've already commented. Community, IDEs, environments, frameworks, help, documentation, availability... the list is just huge. Even for non-programmers beginners, I would recommend other languages and platforms.

To defend it, you cannot point out both the features of the commercial ColdFusion 8 and the free Railo (Railo has several editions, not all of them free xD, really CF style).
Well, i'll try some of these stuff.

BTW, even in the Railo webpage it clearly says one of the most frustrating weakness about CF: documentation or "CF will do whatever it likes":
<quote>
In ColdFusion CFC's are searched, THOUGH UNDOCUMMENTED, inside the customtag directory as well. In addition they are searched recursively in the sub directories as well. Railo does not support that. There are several reasons for that:

* It's undocumented
* It's irritating
* is slower than absolute addressing
</quote>

RE: re: learning curve: Ok, I see your point. Obviously I was talking about programmers, people who is going to learn a language and already know the programming and algorithmic theory. I agree, coldfusion seems to be designed to front-end designers who need to code a bit. Maybe that's a reason why not a single developer I know likes coldfusion, we're not the target.

RE: re: bugs. I'm saying that find a bug in PHP is easier, you have many more tools, and fix them is also easier. PHP community cannot be compared to CF one. Size matters. Huge amounts of info, many sources, etc. Those things matter. Eiffel also has its community, but i wouldn't use it for a critical development. And i like Eiffel, something I cannot say about CF.
By the way, i would be horrified if the really small and far from accurate CF documentation had any cost. Don't sell it to me saying "its free". Compare it with any serious language, please.

RE: re: whitespace - not so simple, and not so effective. For starters, its an issue that shouldn't exist. And now you know someone. Largely used website needs any kilobyte. Again, size matters.

RE: re: custom tags 'cost' - I've yet to see a language with those issues with supposedly equal functionalities. I'm not (only) saying that custom tags cost a lot, but that they are supposed to be the same, and so huge performance penalty is not documented and ignored. I'm not saying anything about bad uses, or poor algorithms. I'm comparing functionalities. Of course in Java reflection is slower. So in many other languages. But it's documented, and if you use it, you know it. To get penalties "for free", not because i have a poor algorithm, but because i use a standard functionality.

RE: re: MVC - You're right, i know almost nothing about them. I've read some stuff about some of them, but i wasn't pleased at all. Again, compare it with the number, potential and size of PHP, Java, or any other serious language.

RE: re: DB access. I don't like CF admin. But that wasn't my point. I was saying that if you compare that php code snippet with the <cfquery> one, compare it right. I'd never use a php code like that, the db config has to be separated, connections opened and closed in one specific way, in a specific manager class, etc. But dont tell me that <cfquery> is easier because you only need the query, and in php you have to connect to database and prepare the config. We both know it's not true.

RE: re: Dreamweaver. Yes, i've seen CS4. Again, if you're a coder, there are many weaknesses. Im looking forward to try that eclipse based IDE (I'll follow it's development, thanks a lot xD), because CFE sucks a bit (i only use it in order to use the standard Eclipse functionalities, and it's extremely buggy). Hope it's ok, really. If it is even quasi-stable I'll use it. But, of course, debugger, auto-complete, I hope inmediate warnings while coding... yep... welcome to (at least) 5 years ago :)

Re: re: Cross platform. My point is: don't sell that CF is cross platform to me. All serious web oriented language is, so it's not an advantage per se. And yes, there are many more environment related issues with CF than with PHP or Java, but it's a secondary point. The main one is: its a minimum, shared with the other languages, so it is not an advantage.

It would be a really interesting. Im not actually such a PHP fan but - as i first wrote - a ColdFusion victim :)
Any healthy discussion about this is more than welcome.

for starters, the learning curve with CF is NOT as fast as in:
- Python, Ruby, even Java: OO languages, so you can actually reuse much of what you already know about OO theory.
- PHP: both OO or procedural programming. Common and quite standard 'thinking way', always the same.
- any well-documented language. If there is a bug, i have to be able to know about it, and it has to be fixed asap. With CF you'll find out that many errors are not actually yours, but CF bugs. You have to learn where the weak spots are to avoid them. And forget about community knowledge. The little documentation there is about CF tags use and real behaviour comes from other users, but with a community so small its far from enough.

Plus, what CF does without your knowledge is amazing. For example: if you don't prevent it (and its not as simple as you may think) it generates tons of whitespaces and new lines, enough to increment your html weight in like 40-50%. Even more if you pretend to use components (the CF Object Oriented approach).

The overhead you get if you use one directive instead of another is huge - even when they're supposed to be equivalent - and worst of all, it is not documented at all. Nowhere. You have to play with it, test around, and you'll discover what CF custom tags really cost you.

If you want to develop something a bit more complex than a simple personal webpage with hardcoded queries, you'll find out that you're alone in a scary undocumented world. Forget about choosing the right framework for you: there is none. Forget anything you know about MVC. If you try to implement your own MVC framework/strategy you'll find out that, in fact, you have to do it all. No help around.

Of course, as a view oriented tag script language semi-evolved into something serious, the view development is easy. Kind of. If you compare it with strict java, C, or other non-view-oriented language. Its not faster than PHP, JSP, etc. Of course im talking about development speed.
But, in any serious development, html printing is not the heavy part. And what you suffer there is hard enough for me to avoid CF.

Debugging: The Coldfusion debugger before CF8 didn't support breakpoints and that kind of debugging at all. You only get a display with some info (by far not all you need). Even CF8's one is far from what you get with Java or even PHP's Zend Debugger. The error handling isn't better in any way that what you get with PHP or any other web programming language.

Easy: Your example with CFQUERY has a weak point: you have to configure the datasource access in the evil ColdFusion Administrator in order to connect. Try to remember those ODBC access you have to configure when you worked with ASP. With PHP you can configure it or not, you have lots and lots of strategies and helpers, you can use PDO, etc. Ok, PHP lacks of Hibernate or something as powerful as that, but thats between PHP and Java (or Python, etc). CF is still in the 90s, in another league.

Integration with Macromedia Products: Please. only one (2 if you count CFEclipse, a poorly mantained and buggy eclipse plugin) editor. And Dreamweaver is far from an efficient IDE. Is oriented to designers much more than to developers. As coldfusion is, by the way.

Cross-Platform compatibility: is this supposed to be an advantage? PHP is not cross platform? or Java? or Python? Come on. If it wasn't cross-platform, it would be a complete joke. And, by the way: haven't you get that kind moment when you realized that for any unknown reason that script doesn't work the same way in those 2 servers? It's because it's not truly platform independent. Many languages are not, but at least you can find out where are the weak spots. With Coldfusion you're alone. If you want to avoid any surprises, dont forget: development, pre-production and production enviroments have to be the same SO with the same kernel and the same JVM. Don't say i didn't warn you.

If you want fast develoment, well documented languages, as less bad surprises as you can get, great IDEs, frameworks and helpers, etc:

AVOID COLDFUSION

Disclaimer: everything im saying here are based on real situations with Coldfusion in my company. Good luck.

As a CF 'victim', let me just say: you're wrong. Period.
ColdFusion is a complete pain, full of non-documented bugs, and CF development is at least 30-40% slower than PHP development. Id rather develop with ASP 3.0 and VBScript.
Maybe later I'll post some real life examples with coldfusion development 'lifestyle', to answer the 'logical facts'.