ColdFusion is a rapid development platform for building modern web applications. ColdFusion is designed to be expressive and powerful. The expressive characteristic allows you to perform programming tasks at a higher level than most other languages. The powerful characteristic gives you integration with functionality important to web applications like database access, MS Exchange access, PDF form creation and more.
The ColdFusion platform is built on Java and uses the Apache Tomcat J2EE container. While you have full access to Java and Tomcat, you need not worry about these details. You'll interact with ColdFusion and the user friendly ColdFusion Mark-up Language (CFML) to write your programs. Your ColdFusion files will use the file extension '.cfc' for objects and '.cfm' for pages. CFML requires much less ceremony and infrastructure than typical java while offering a significantly faster development experience than Java.
After taking this CF in a Week series, you'll have the basics necessary to begin making dynamic web sites, building intranet applications, or even working on the next Facebook competitor!