April 1, 2025 • 26 mins
Join hosts Daniel Garcia and Eric Peterson as they dive into the latest news and updates in the BoxLang and CFML world. Don’t miss out on insights, discussions, and what’s coming next for modern software development! 🚀
#BoxLang #CFML #ColdFusion #Adobe #AdobeColdFusion #Java #JavaScript #Security #Software #Web #App #WebDevelopment #jvm
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📖 Chapters
=========================================
00:00 Welcome to the Modernize or Die Podcast
00:25 Revamping the Podcast Format
01:00 Into the Box Updates
03:29 Product Releases and Updates
07:51 SPONSOR - Ortus Solutions
08:48 BoxLang News
14:08 CFML News and Updates
22:44 Upcoming Events
24:47 Thank Yous
=========================================
📚 Resources
=========================================
🌍 Website:
[https://boxlang.io]
🖥 Code Online:
[https://try.boxlang.io]
🐙 GitHub:
https://github.com/ortus-boxlang/BoxLang
📖 Documentation:
[https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com]
=========================================
🔥 Join the BoxLang Community!
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💬 Community Forums:
https://community.ortussolutions.com/...
💬 Join us on Slack:
[https://slack.ortussolutions.com]
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📢 Follow us on Social Media!
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🔵 X (Twitter):
https://x.com/tryboxlang
💼 LinkedIn:
/ tryboxlang
📘 Facebook:
/ tryboxlang
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everybody.
Welcome to the Modernize or Die podcast.
Hello
We look a little bit different.
We'll tell you about it here in a minute.
Well, welcome.
Even though it is April 1st, we are not fooling you.
We are actually, well, first of all, my name is Daniel Garcia.
I am a co-host of the Modernize or Die podcast.
Joined by:
Eric Peterson,
So, just really quick, welcome everyone to the updated Modernize or Die podcast.
(00:24):
Thank you for tuning in.
As you know, one of Ortus mantras is Modernize or Die.
And so one thing that we like to do is take our advice.
So as we, from time to time, review our setups, our systems, our processes.
So anyway, we're modernizing how we do things.
And part of that is revamping the whole Modernize or Die podcast, changing up the format alittle bit, changing up how we, the tools we use to deliver it.
(00:49):
And so if there's a few bumps in the road, especially this first episode or two, weapologize.
We are using a new system called Riverside.fm And so far it's really awesome, but youknow, we're still learning it.
So with all that out of the way, let's jump into some Ortus news to start.
Into the Box is less than a month away?
A month away?
It's right there, right there on the cusp.
(01:10):
about four weeks and a couple days.
So, because we're in April now and it is right here in May.
Tickets are still available.
In fact, you can get some discounts, buy one, get one half off, or for the teams outthere, buy two, get one free.
Also the sessions schedule is very close to being finalized.
I saw a message on it.
think there's only a couple more spots they're trying to figure out and after that I wouldnot be surprised that they release it sooner than later.
(01:35):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right two slots that are left to be filled so I They saidthey would if I wanted but Yeah, I I have a few I could talk about I always want to talk
about Inertia I always want to talk about Tailwind I know that will make Jon Clausen andEsme very happy for me to talk about Tailwind so
(01:58):
unfortunately last year you weren't able to make it to Into the Box, so you kind of belike make it up for lost time.
More Eric all the time.
So in other big news, we are going to have an online version again this year.
Into the Box virtual tickets will be available.
The Early Bird online ticket tomorrow until April 16th.
(02:19):
After that they'll go to the regular price.
So the link that we just posted is out now, but the ticket sales start tomorrow atmidnight.
And I was just going to ask that because Majo one of our wonderful marketing people,updated the notes on here.
And I don't know if she meant to say...
for an early bird price right now.
So that's
(02:41):
met midnight this morning.
So that's $199 for the virtual conference ticket.
If you wait until April 15th, it's going to be $240.
So that gets you access to watch not only the keynotes, which we stream for free, but alsoall the sessions.
You'll still have to choose which one, of course, and then access later on CFCasts when itcomes out.
(03:02):
all the sessions, not the workshops.
Workshops are something different.
You gotta be there for the workshops.
But yeah, I'm excited, man.
This is our second year in D.C.
It's a great venue.
I'm also excited that our hotel is a little closer this year than last year.
I didn't have to walk uphill both ways to get to the session.
Okay, last year, I gotta walk downhill towards it.
But walking uphill at the end of the day with all your laptops and bags, was, yeah.
(03:26):
So, it'll be good.
I think we're a block away now.
Well
coming up, I think we've got some product updates.
You want to tell us about that?
Sure, so we have two big ones.
I'd like to mention that we had TestBox 6.3 released just yesterday I believe and theheadline feature of this release is there is a new BoxLang reporter this skips the web
(03:47):
request cycle entirely and is just running in pure BoxLang via the CLI and I pinged Luisfor some numbers and he says it's twice as fast so yeah, I
would love to use that.
And it's paving the way to use in VS Code like in the test explorer that you can get inother languages because it's built right in.
We can put it as part of the language server protocol and you don't have to have a webserver running to run that TestBox runner.
(04:12):
Nice.
Do you have to have CommandBox?
Not for this no, it's pure BoxLang.
Yep
that's awesome.
That is so cool.
The other release also very much BoxLang related, but a little bit of Adobe ColdFusion onthe side.
ContentBox 6.1 has been released.
The headline feature is that it is now ready for BoxLang and Adobe 2025.
(04:34):
Lucee 6 folks, hold on.
We're dealing with in quite a few products some regressions in Lucee 6 So we're workingthrough those though.
So yeah, if you've been waiting to upgrade some of your ContentBox sites and try it onBoxLang.
Here's your chance with Content Box 6.1 on the article that Daniel's put in the shownotes.
It gives you an upgrade guide to show you how to do that pretty straightforward.
(04:56):
So run it and let us know how that runs on BoxLang, which as an aside, again, talking toLuis, BoxLang is in such a good spot right now.
We're cutting or getting ready to cut the third release candidate.
Remember, we're releasing this in a month.
I believe it's...
Hold on, I gotta get the actual numbers before I Daniel vamp for me Daniel.
(05:16):
man.
Well you're kind of giving away the spoilers.
I was going to tease that RC3 is coming soon because it hasn't dropped yet but I would notbe surprised if it drops any moment our day now.
And although it's not official we are targeting ITB for BoxLang Do not be surprised.
Luis has said it's one of our most solid releases to date and extremely fast All of histest suites as kind of mentioned earlier are running on BoxLang twice as fast as Adobe
(05:45):
2021, 23, and 25 On the Lucee front.
I believe it's a tad behind but not like orders of magnitude.
So Lucee Lucee has done get some good work.
We have some some some good
Work pushing us
Yep, and remember it's still RC release.
It's release candidate, it's not the final release.
So we've got time to speed it up even more.
(06:08):
And then there's one product I know that's very near and dear to you Eric, because I thinkit was your idea to begin with, your brainchild.
There's a CFCasts refresh.
There'll be a more powerful and user-friendly CFCasts is coming to help you modernize andevolve.
Some of the updates, you want to tell us about that?
I sure can.
So a lot of it's visual refresh.
If you've been wondering why we've never supported dark mode, that's on me.
(06:31):
I don't use dark mode.
I'm a weird guy like that.
So dark and light mode support.
Team plans are coming that you can add and remove seats as needed so your team can managethat.
Better organizing the content by speakers so you can find that and some better searchoptions as well.
Additionally, I think I saw it down near the bottom.
I'm trying to find it
(06:51):
There it is.
It's in the BoxLang section, but I'm stealing it.
We are also doing some work to launch alongside CFCasts BoxLang Academy.
It will look very similar, but it will have dark mode.
Now we're basing it off of the CFCasts's website as well, but giving you all of theBoxLang content that we're...
(07:14):
turning out we get at our conferences that we'll start making series and topics on how toget started and get awesome with BoxLang.
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
And that will be a separate site and product from CFCasts.
Is that correct or is that still to be determined?
Okay.
I haven't actually heard a lot about it other than I'm excited for it.
Ortus, when they first brought the idea, wanted to combine them and call it like OrtusAcademy or something like that.
(07:37):
But I begged them to keep the CFCasts name because I think it's so cool.
I love the fact that there's a CFC in the name of the domain.
So they agreed and that's why we're going to have two.
That's okay.
Well, they're different purposes too.
So they're a little bit.
So great.
So as always, I know we don't always talk about this, but this podcast, the Modernize orDie podcast, is sponsored by Ortus Solutions.
(07:59):
Well, of course it is because Eric and I work for Ortus Solutions.
But we have a couple of services that we wanted to call out.
Elasticsearch.
We want to enhance your search and analytics capabilities through expert Elasticsearchsolutions.
We provide custom implementations, performance tuning, seamless integrations to help youscale and optimize your data and search efficiently with AWS OpenSearch.
(08:21):
And we'll put the link there.
And then you want to talk about staff augmentation, Eric.
if you have a project you're working on, you need some extra people, you're not ready tohire a full employee, or maybe you just want to get the experts on all thing box, you can
contact Ortus Solutions.
We can help augment your team and help you get that project over the finish line.
(08:41):
Yep, whether you need just a little bit of help or you want us to, you know, do it all foryou.
We can do it.
We have done it and we'll keep doing it.
Alright, should we talk about some BoxLang news?
thought you would never ask.
So BoxLang.
So the first obviously ITB is coming up.
There's gonna be a lot of BoxLang content there, but we got 25 % off on BoxLang licensesuntil Into the Box
(09:04):
And why would you want a BoxLang license?
You want support.
want priority help to getting some of your bugs fixed.
You want access to some of the awesome premium modules like Redis Support and our AImodule.
All the modules come as part of a BoxLang license.
So lots of value built in to that BoxLang license.
And if you look at the pricing, find that's actually very, very reasonable in terms ofcost and restrictions.
(09:30):
Or no restrictions, as you might say.
Oh, 100%.
We are open source.
for some more modules or for some professional support, we got you.
Yep, and then I know you were just teasing RC3, but a few weeks ago we launched BoxLangRC2.
It seems like every month we're, you getting towards that goal line.
(09:53):
Yes, and please install these and test.
We're not doing any new features right now.
We're just trying to get this as solid as possible.
And the more applications that can be tested on it, the more we find the fun edge casesout there in software.
Absolutely, and I said RC3 don't be surprised if there's a blog announcement any day now.
And that's probably going to be the last big release candidate I would guess, Eric, beforethe final.
(10:19):
I don't want to speak out of school, but...
Okay.
Kind of exciting news too, BoxLang virtual machines are now available in Azure.
So if you're looking to spin up a BoxLang VM and you like to use Azure, we got youcovered.
Speaking of premium modules, the BoxLang Generative AI module is out.
This is a wrapper around using many different AI services in a fluent functional API.
(10:45):
I will throw the blog post introducing it into the chat.
You can also have multiple providers and switch between them as needed.
Everybody's kind building towards AI.
There's probably something in your product that AI could help with.
So this is a great way to easily integrate with that.
And again, if you got a BoxLang license, this is included.
(11:06):
Yep.
And I was actually there.
It was kind of cool.
I was there at DevNexus when Luis was like, I'm going to add this to BoxLang And then hedid.
And then it was released.
And it was cool.
And that's what kind of happens sometimes.
You get an idea from somebody or somebody asks for a feature.
And we're like, you know what?
We agree.
We want AI in BoxLang And boom, we have it.
We got a blog post from Raymond Camden who's been writing a lot about BoxLang for us.
(11:30):
He talks about building a web app with BoxLang.
And I'll be honest, when I came into this article, I thought I was going to see ColdBoxbut this is even more bare bones, not in a bad way.
This is showing BoxLang just what is built into the application server and how you canmake a web app with that.
So he shows a little blog, no framework, no...
(11:50):
The only thing he installs is the MySQL module so he can connect to the database.
It's really cool just to see a very simple and introductory web app with BoxLang.
Yep.
And of course, Ray Camden's working with us, Ortus Solutions, on evangelizing BoxLang.
He's been doing a lot of blogging, he's been talking about it, been doing a lot oftesting, trying things out.
And we all know Ray, well, I don't know about we all, but Ray's a long time ColdFusioncommunity member and is a very prolific blogger.
(12:18):
And I don't think he's really slowed down over the years.
I think he's still going ahead and we're very fortunate to have him here.
Okay.
We've talked about Into the Box a few times now.
Know there is tons of content there.
Rather than read it all, tell you to head to the website.
There's a workshop with Luis and Brad and at least eight sessions on BoxLang.
So check out Into the Box.
(12:38):
You want to be there.
We want to see you there.
Yep, and if you know nothing about BoxLang that's okay.
You come out there and you'll leave knowing a whole lot about BoxLang and hopefully you'vebeen writing your own apps.
CF Camp's also gonna have some BoxLang goodness.
We have Zero to Hero with ColdBox and BoxLang, multi-runtime with Luis, and gettingstarted with the BoxLang runtimes with Brad Wood.
(12:59):
So one of the tenets of BoxLang is we wanted it to be able to run in multiple differentruntimes, not just the web runtime.
One thing that's hindered some of the tooling that we've wanted to build in the past wasthe fact that you always had to have a web server running.
You know, even CommandBox
technically is a long running web request.
Like one single one that Brad just keeps listening to.
It's kind of funny.
So BoxLang was built so it could be run on the CLI web server.
(13:22):
can be run serverless in lambdas, all sorts of places.
So come learn what that means and how that can help your business needs out in Brad'ssession or get go from zero to hero with cold box and BoxLang with Luis, the maker of
both.
And it's also very exciting.
There's going to be about, I think, five sessions at CFCamp that touch on BoxLang in somemanner.
(13:43):
And so that is very exciting to see.
So BoxLang is here, people.
Well, it's been here, but it's really going to be here.
And it's out there and we're innovating.
We're developing it.
And I love going into it.
And hopefully you will also like it as well.
But check out the CFCamp.org website for all the latest sessions, information, speakers.
And all that.
And we'll also include a link to our CFCamp Camp workshops, those two that were mentionedas well.
(14:06):
Those will be happening before the conference.
That's enough of some BoxLang news.
Let's talk about some CFML news and updates.
We have some slides you might want to check out from the one and only Pete Freitag TheCWE, is Common Weakness Web Exploits.
That sounds right.
Because it's not CVE, which is vulnerability.
(14:29):
But this is a presentation he gave.
He put the slides up of 25 web exploits you might want to look for in your app.
Well, a lot of them are like, you know, when you're doing your coding, you know, do this,do that.
So like the number one is cross-site scripting.
He gives you ideas of, you know, what that is and how you can mitigate against it.
(14:50):
Number two, out of bound rights.
And number three, SQL injection, that old chestnut that's been around for like 20 years.
And most CF developers protect ourselves against it because we use cfqueryparam andbindings.
He also goes into the ones you might not have thought of, like hard-coded credentials inyour code instead of using environment variables or secrets, uncontrolled resource
consumption.
(15:11):
I remember running this at the beginning of my coding career where you don't put the limiton a query that someone can run and all of a sudden they're grabbing 30 million records
from a database.
So just things like that.
Great article great presentation and happy to share that here.
Yeah, whenever I go to any sort of conference that Pete's presenting, I'm gonna go there.
(15:31):
It scares you a little bit, but it's also reassuring that, you know, hey, we got this.
And that was at ColdFusion Summit East, which was, I believe, a couple weeks ago, a weekor two ago.
But yeah.
And other big CFML update news, Masa CMS version 7.5 is released.
I excited to get that email yesterday, I think.
New in 7.5, multi-tenant support for Microsoft Entra, Single Sign-On, Factory Scriptupgrades, improved compatibility with 2021 and ACF 2021, 2023, a lot of bug fixes.
(16:02):
They're deprecating some of the old session support, non-Bcrypto passwords and others.
And looking ahead, they're looking to support Adobe ColdFusion 2025.
And can you guess,
Wait, where's our sound effect?
I wasn't ready.
No.
Nope, this one.
Live.
(16:24):
Is it BoxLang?
Yeah!
You know, I was waiting for a cymbal crash at the end of that, but I guess not.
that joke will land better next time when I'm ready for it.
Sorry everybody.
Again, it's a new format.
We're just feeling it out.
Yeah.
Congratulations to Masa on the release.
Absolutely.
Good job guys and keep doing what you're doing.
(16:45):
And if you're not, don't know who Masa is, they are an open source fork of what Mura usedto be.
Mura was a great product, great content management system.
They had to make some changes.
Masa forked it and they're moving forward.
if you can't use Content Box for any reason, I don't know why you couldn't, but if youcan't use it, check out Masa.
Or just check them out anyway because you know what?
(17:06):
Variety is the spice of life.
Or I believe one of the Into the Box sessions this year is migrating from Mura and Masa toContentBox come to Into the Box, go to that session by Jon Clausen and come jump on the
modernize train.
Woohoo!
We need a train whistle every time you say the modernize train.
(17:28):
I don't think we got one.
yep, didn't get the horn either.
Anyway, next time things will improve.
Speaking of new releases, Galaxie Blog 4 is out by Gregory Alexander.
This is the blog engine he's been working out.
He details all of the new features and improvements over on his website.
Congrats on the release, Gregory.
Yep, I think one of the big features is it's fast, like really, really fast.
(17:52):
Yeah, it's built on Lucee, which again, they are doing great in that department.
We need to keep chasing them.
Yep.
And then let's do a couple other blog posts we want to touch on.
One thing, you know, the format change, we used to just like talk on and on and on aboutall these great blog posts, but in the interest of time, we're not going to do that like
we used to, but we're going to try and pick out a few highlights here and there.
(18:14):
And...
goal is to keep this to 30 minutes is the goal.
So we're doing okay right now.
Let's see how we do So James Moberg has a very interesting part a post a great title CFFrankenstein choosing to use execute executables instead of CFML BIFs And I read it and I
was like I had never thought about this so using the 7-zip executable instead of the cfzipbecause it's faster
(18:38):
using curl over a cfhttp You know image magic things like that like he's got a whole bunchwkhtml2pdf Yeah, it is very interesting idea I'd love to see all these Like packaged up in
ForgeBox because the idea of trying to manage all those on the system sounds whoo, but
(19:02):
the, has a one for AWS S3, S3 Express.
I think he went from 110 seconds for the built-in services using the Amazon CLI or CLI,took 40 seconds, but with S3 Express, I think he said it took like 16 seconds.
So.
you can check all the different performances that he has there and why he chose the oneshe has.
(19:23):
But yeah, really neat idea.
I don't really think of cfexecute much, so thanks for pulling attention to that.
Absolutely.
Of course that means, what, Windows only?
That's okay.
No, no, you can do the, most of these have Linux equivalents, which is what you're runningon if you're not running on Windows, So, they just don't have .exe at the end.
Nah, fair enough, fair enough.
(19:43):
I'm a Windows guy, I don't always think about some of those others.
No, you've got plenty to hold against me, Like the fact I'm messing up this podcast.
No, not messing up, not at all.
All right, last blog post we want to talk about is from Ben Nadal.
He is exploring variadic function mechanics in ColdFusion.
Variadic meaning varying in size.
(20:05):
So this is where you can call a function and pass 0, 1, 8, a million arguments, and it'sgoing to do stuff about it.
And he goes through the different options, right?
We have the argument scope that you've been able to use.
How can you interact with that?
Lucee and BoxLang have talked about using the REST and SPREAD operators.
(20:25):
I don't think that one's in BoxLang yet, maybe.
Looks like he had trouble with it in any case, so we have something to fix there.
But yeah, I look very forward to the day we have REST and SPREAD, especially SPREAD.
I feel like I use that all the time in JavaScript and I'd use it all the time here in...
for the people that aren't as cool as you and Ben, can you explain what Rest and Spreadis?
(20:46):
Sure, let me see if I can find an example in his code and then...
See if I can make it appear here in Riverside.
We're gonna see.
Everybody hold on.
We'll see.
Right now it's going the ladder.
Share screen and this one.
(21:07):
All right.
Okay, so here is the REST operator in a ColdFusion file, though none of them worked, whichwas sad.
Especially, I read this through and I can see he's only testing Lucee and Adobe and I'msure BoxLang did this because we talked about it, but it wasn't working either.
So these three dots in front of the inputs tells the code everything after every, youknow, the nth argument.
(21:34):
put into an array called inputs.
So you could have A, B, and then dot, dot, dot inputs, and that would be the first onegoes in A, the second in B, and then inputs gets everything else.
Spread is here in line 12, this is using it as an array.
It's saying I have an array, and I want you to put everything in that array into this newone plus whatever else I wanna put in there.
(21:59):
That should also work with objects where you can put all, or structs.
sorry I was talking JavaScripty.
You can put all the keys from the struct into a new struct.
The benefit of this is it's a little less verbose than the struct append.
You don't have to end the order is what determines if you're overriding or not.
So if in the struct you had the spread operator and then you said my key is foo colon bar,even if your spread had foo in it, it would get overwritten.
(22:30):
But if you did it the other way, where foo was on the top and then you spread, the spreadwould overwrite.
Interesting.
So that's rest and spread.
And you can check out that blog post for more info as well.
Okay, well it didn't blow up when we tried to share, All right, we got just a few minutesleft to tell you about some events and some thank yous.
(22:53):
Yep, absolutely.
for the events, obviously the big one that's near and dear to us is Into the Box.
April 30th through May 2nd in Washington, D.C., IntoTheBox.org.
The first day is workshops and then the conference itself is May 1st and 2nd.
Next we have CF Camp, May 22nd and 23rd in Munich, Germany with a special Ortus Solutionsworkshop before on the 21st.
(23:15):
You can find out more at cfcamp.org and again at the link earlier for our Ortus workshops.
Yep.
And then Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2025, it'll be September 22nd and 23rd.
That's the one that's in Vegas.
Vegas, baby!
Where they do it every fall.
If you want to get certified, you can do that either on September 21st or 24th.
(23:35):
If you go to the website, there's more information.
I don't know if they've even got a call for speakers yet on that, but they just, you know,they just wrapped up CF Summit East and now they're going to be
taking care of that.
So yeah, it's a really good conference too.
If you can't come to ITB, then at least try to go to like CF Camp or Adobe Summit, CFSummit.
Which I think are the only three ColdFusion conferences, right?
(23:57):
I'm not missing anybody.
I believe you're right.
Yeah, those are the...
and West, but CF Summit.
Yeah, yeah.
Those are the only ones that have dedicated ColdFusion tracks.
We try to take ColdFusion to DevNexus right?
And Into the Box is ColdFusion plus right?
BoxLang, ColdFusion, and more.
So.
This year we took BoxLang to DevNexus and it was all about the BoxLang and I got to go andI was talking BoxLang to all these Java devs and full disclosure, I'm not a Java dev.
(24:27):
I mean I know some but I do not identify as a Java developer.
I am a future BoxLang developer.
No, I'm a BoxLang developer now.
Yeah, you know, I still don't, I still don't really identify as a Java developer, butgiven the amount of Java code I've written for BoxLang, I probably should change that.
Yep.
Yep, yep, yep.
(24:48):
Well, that brings us to the end today into our thank you section.
We love to thank our Patreon supporters.
These are individuals personally supporting our open source initiatives, great toolingslike CommandBox ForgeBox, ColdBox, ContentBox, you name it.
Their contributions also help fund the cloud infrastructure that we rely on at ForgeBoxfor package management in the CFML and BoxLang community.
(25:09):
You can join us at patreon.com/ortussolutions .
There's lots of fun perks and even discounts for annual memberships.
Go ahead and go take a look there.
well if you pay for the year you save 10 % and if you do the bronze package and up you nowget a ForgeBox Pro and CFCasts subscription as a perk.
All Patreon supporters have a profile badge on the Ortus Community website.
There is a private forum access on the community website.
(25:33):
And you have your own private channel on the BoxTeam Slack.
That's the Ortus Box Team Slack channel.
You can come in and chat with us.
We have many lovely sponsors.
can see them all at ortussolutions.com/about-us/sponsors as part of again rebranding thepodcast.
We're not sure how we want to call out our lovely Patreon supporters.
(25:53):
Are we going to keep doing the adjectives each time?
Are we going to keep the top supporters?
Are we going to read out one person's name?
We'll see.
We'll probably try a few things.
But for today, we're going to thank everybody that has supported us on Patreon, companiesand individuals.
Thank you for supporting us and this podcast.
We hope you liked some of the changes and feel free to send us your feedback.
(26:14):
If you're interested in sponsoring that section that we have from Ortus, reach out on ourContact Us form.
We'd love to talk to you and help you reach this awesome CFML and BoxLang community.
Absolutely, again, thank you again everybody.
Have a great Tuesday.
Happy Tuesday.
Bye.
Hello everybody.
Welcome to the Modernize or Die podcast.
Hello
We look a little bit different.
We'll tell you about it here in a minute.
Well, welcome.
Even though it is April 1st, we are not fooling you.
We are actually, well, first of all, my name is Daniel Garcia.
I am a co-host of the Modernize or Die podcast.
Joined by:
Eric Peterson,
So, just really quick, welcome everyone to the updated Modernize or Die podcast.
(00:24):
Thank you for tuning in.
As you know, one of Ortus mantras is Modernize or Die.
And so one thing that we like to do is take our advice.
So as we, from time to time, review our setups, our systems, our processes.
So anyway, we're modernizing how we do things.
And part of that is revamping the whole Modernize or Die podcast, changing up the format alittle bit, changing up how we, the tools we use to deliver it.
(00:49):
And so if there's a few bumps in the road, especially this first episode or two, weapologize.
We are using a new system called Riverside.fm And so far it's really awesome, but youknow, we're still learning it.
So with all that out of the way, let's jump into some Ortus news to start.
Into the Box is less than a month away?
A month away?
It's right there, right there on the cusp.
(01:10):
about four weeks and a couple days.
So, because we're in April now and it is right here in May.
Tickets are still available.
In fact, you can get some discounts, buy one, get one half off, or for the teams outthere, buy two, get one free.
Also the sessions schedule is very close to being finalized.
I saw a message on it.
think there's only a couple more spots they're trying to figure out and after that I wouldnot be surprised that they release it sooner than later.
(01:35):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right two slots that are left to be filled so I They saidthey would if I wanted but Yeah, I I have a few I could talk about I always want to talk
about Inertia I always want to talk about Tailwind I know that will make Jon Clausen andEsme very happy for me to talk about Tailwind so
(01:58):
unfortunately last year you weren't able to make it to Into the Box, so you kind of belike make it up for lost time.
More Eric all the time.
So in other big news, we are going to have an online version again this year.
Into the Box virtual tickets will be available.
The Early Bird online ticket tomorrow until April 16th.
(02:19):
After that they'll go to the regular price.
So the link that we just posted is out now, but the ticket sales start tomorrow atmidnight.
And I was just going to ask that because Majo one of our wonderful marketing people,updated the notes on here.
And I don't know if she meant to say...
for an early bird price right now.
So that's
(02:41):
met midnight this morning.
So that's $199 for the virtual conference ticket.
If you wait until April 15th, it's going to be $240.
So that gets you access to watch not only the keynotes, which we stream for free, but alsoall the sessions.
You'll still have to choose which one, of course, and then access later on CFCasts when itcomes out.
(03:02):
all the sessions, not the workshops.
Workshops are something different.
You gotta be there for the workshops.
But yeah, I'm excited, man.
This is our second year in D.C.
It's a great venue.
I'm also excited that our hotel is a little closer this year than last year.
I didn't have to walk uphill both ways to get to the session.
Okay, last year, I gotta walk downhill towards it.
But walking uphill at the end of the day with all your laptops and bags, was, yeah.
(03:26):
So, it'll be good.
I think we're a block away now.
Well
coming up, I think we've got some product updates.
You want to tell us about that?
Sure, so we have two big ones.
I'd like to mention that we had TestBox 6.3 released just yesterday I believe and theheadline feature of this release is there is a new BoxLang reporter this skips the web
(03:47):
request cycle entirely and is just running in pure BoxLang via the CLI and I pinged Luisfor some numbers and he says it's twice as fast so yeah, I
would love to use that.
And it's paving the way to use in VS Code like in the test explorer that you can get inother languages because it's built right in.
We can put it as part of the language server protocol and you don't have to have a webserver running to run that TestBox runner.
(04:12):
Nice.
Do you have to have CommandBox?
Not for this no, it's pure BoxLang.
Yep
that's awesome.
That is so cool.
The other release also very much BoxLang related, but a little bit of Adobe ColdFusion onthe side.
ContentBox 6.1 has been released.
The headline feature is that it is now ready for BoxLang and Adobe 2025.
(04:34):
Lucee 6 folks, hold on.
We're dealing with in quite a few products some regressions in Lucee 6 So we're workingthrough those though.
So yeah, if you've been waiting to upgrade some of your ContentBox sites and try it onBoxLang.
Here's your chance with Content Box 6.1 on the article that Daniel's put in the shownotes.
It gives you an upgrade guide to show you how to do that pretty straightforward.
(04:56):
So run it and let us know how that runs on BoxLang, which as an aside, again, talking toLuis, BoxLang is in such a good spot right now.
We're cutting or getting ready to cut the third release candidate.
Remember, we're releasing this in a month.
I believe it's...
Hold on, I gotta get the actual numbers before I Daniel vamp for me Daniel.
(05:16):
man.
Well you're kind of giving away the spoilers.
I was going to tease that RC3 is coming soon because it hasn't dropped yet but I would notbe surprised if it drops any moment our day now.
And although it's not official we are targeting ITB for BoxLang Do not be surprised.
Luis has said it's one of our most solid releases to date and extremely fast All of histest suites as kind of mentioned earlier are running on BoxLang twice as fast as Adobe
(05:45):
2021, 23, and 25 On the Lucee front.
I believe it's a tad behind but not like orders of magnitude.
So Lucee Lucee has done get some good work.
We have some some some good
Work pushing us
Yep, and remember it's still RC release.
It's release candidate, it's not the final release.
So we've got time to speed it up even more.
(06:08):
And then there's one product I know that's very near and dear to you Eric, because I thinkit was your idea to begin with, your brainchild.
There's a CFCasts refresh.
There'll be a more powerful and user-friendly CFCasts is coming to help you modernize andevolve.
Some of the updates, you want to tell us about that?
I sure can.
So a lot of it's visual refresh.
If you've been wondering why we've never supported dark mode, that's on me.
(06:31):
I don't use dark mode.
I'm a weird guy like that.
So dark and light mode support.
Team plans are coming that you can add and remove seats as needed so your team can managethat.
Better organizing the content by speakers so you can find that and some better searchoptions as well.
Additionally, I think I saw it down near the bottom.
I'm trying to find it
(06:51):
There it is.
It's in the BoxLang section, but I'm stealing it.
We are also doing some work to launch alongside CFCasts BoxLang Academy.
It will look very similar, but it will have dark mode.
Now we're basing it off of the CFCasts's website as well, but giving you all of theBoxLang content that we're...
(07:14):
turning out we get at our conferences that we'll start making series and topics on how toget started and get awesome with BoxLang.
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
And that will be a separate site and product from CFCasts.
Is that correct or is that still to be determined?
Okay.
I haven't actually heard a lot about it other than I'm excited for it.
Ortus, when they first brought the idea, wanted to combine them and call it like OrtusAcademy or something like that.
(07:37):
But I begged them to keep the CFCasts name because I think it's so cool.
I love the fact that there's a CFC in the name of the domain.
So they agreed and that's why we're going to have two.
That's okay.
Well, they're different purposes too.
So they're a little bit.
So great.
So as always, I know we don't always talk about this, but this podcast, the Modernize orDie podcast, is sponsored by Ortus Solutions.
(07:59):
Well, of course it is because Eric and I work for Ortus Solutions.
But we have a couple of services that we wanted to call out.
Elasticsearch.
We want to enhance your search and analytics capabilities through expert Elasticsearchsolutions.
We provide custom implementations, performance tuning, seamless integrations to help youscale and optimize your data and search efficiently with AWS OpenSearch.
(08:21):
And we'll put the link there.
And then you want to talk about staff augmentation, Eric.
if you have a project you're working on, you need some extra people, you're not ready tohire a full employee, or maybe you just want to get the experts on all thing box, you can
contact Ortus Solutions.
We can help augment your team and help you get that project over the finish line.
(08:41):
Yep, whether you need just a little bit of help or you want us to, you know, do it all foryou.
We can do it.
We have done it and we'll keep doing it.
Alright, should we talk about some BoxLang news?
thought you would never ask.
So BoxLang.
So the first obviously ITB is coming up.
There's gonna be a lot of BoxLang content there, but we got 25 % off on BoxLang licensesuntil Into the Box
(09:04):
And why would you want a BoxLang license?
You want support.
want priority help to getting some of your bugs fixed.
You want access to some of the awesome premium modules like Redis Support and our AImodule.
All the modules come as part of a BoxLang license.
So lots of value built in to that BoxLang license.
And if you look at the pricing, find that's actually very, very reasonable in terms ofcost and restrictions.
(09:30):
Or no restrictions, as you might say.
Oh, 100%.
We are open source.
for some more modules or for some professional support, we got you.
Yep, and then I know you were just teasing RC3, but a few weeks ago we launched BoxLangRC2.
It seems like every month we're, you getting towards that goal line.
(09:53):
Yes, and please install these and test.
We're not doing any new features right now.
We're just trying to get this as solid as possible.
And the more applications that can be tested on it, the more we find the fun edge casesout there in software.
Absolutely, and I said RC3 don't be surprised if there's a blog announcement any day now.
And that's probably going to be the last big release candidate I would guess, Eric, beforethe final.
(10:19):
I don't want to speak out of school, but...
Okay.
Kind of exciting news too, BoxLang virtual machines are now available in Azure.
So if you're looking to spin up a BoxLang VM and you like to use Azure, we got youcovered.
Speaking of premium modules, the BoxLang Generative AI module is out.
This is a wrapper around using many different AI services in a fluent functional API.
(10:45):
I will throw the blog post introducing it into the chat.
You can also have multiple providers and switch between them as needed.
Everybody's kind building towards AI.
There's probably something in your product that AI could help with.
So this is a great way to easily integrate with that.
And again, if you got a BoxLang license, this is included.
(11:06):
Yep.
And I was actually there.
It was kind of cool.
I was there at DevNexus when Luis was like, I'm going to add this to BoxLang And then hedid.
And then it was released.
And it was cool.
And that's what kind of happens sometimes.
You get an idea from somebody or somebody asks for a feature.
And we're like, you know what?
We agree.
We want AI in BoxLang And boom, we have it.
We got a blog post from Raymond Camden who's been writing a lot about BoxLang for us.
(11:30):
He talks about building a web app with BoxLang.
And I'll be honest, when I came into this article, I thought I was going to see ColdBoxbut this is even more bare bones, not in a bad way.
This is showing BoxLang just what is built into the application server and how you canmake a web app with that.
So he shows a little blog, no framework, no...
(11:50):
The only thing he installs is the MySQL module so he can connect to the database.
It's really cool just to see a very simple and introductory web app with BoxLang.
Yep.
And of course, Ray Camden's working with us, Ortus Solutions, on evangelizing BoxLang.
He's been doing a lot of blogging, he's been talking about it, been doing a lot oftesting, trying things out.
And we all know Ray, well, I don't know about we all, but Ray's a long time ColdFusioncommunity member and is a very prolific blogger.
(12:18):
And I don't think he's really slowed down over the years.
I think he's still going ahead and we're very fortunate to have him here.
Okay.
We've talked about Into the Box a few times now.
Know there is tons of content there.
Rather than read it all, tell you to head to the website.
There's a workshop with Luis and Brad and at least eight sessions on BoxLang.
So check out Into the Box.
(12:38):
You want to be there.
We want to see you there.
Yep, and if you know nothing about BoxLang that's okay.
You come out there and you'll leave knowing a whole lot about BoxLang and hopefully you'vebeen writing your own apps.
CF Camp's also gonna have some BoxLang goodness.
We have Zero to Hero with ColdBox and BoxLang, multi-runtime with Luis, and gettingstarted with the BoxLang runtimes with Brad Wood.
(12:59):
So one of the tenets of BoxLang is we wanted it to be able to run in multiple differentruntimes, not just the web runtime.
One thing that's hindered some of the tooling that we've wanted to build in the past wasthe fact that you always had to have a web server running.
You know, even CommandBox
technically is a long running web request.
Like one single one that Brad just keeps listening to.
It's kind of funny.
So BoxLang was built so it could be run on the CLI web server.
(13:22):
can be run serverless in lambdas, all sorts of places.
So come learn what that means and how that can help your business needs out in Brad'ssession or get go from zero to hero with cold box and BoxLang with Luis, the maker of
both.
And it's also very exciting.
There's going to be about, I think, five sessions at CFCamp that touch on BoxLang in somemanner.
(13:43):
And so that is very exciting to see.
So BoxLang is here, people.
Well, it's been here, but it's really going to be here.
And it's out there and we're innovating.
We're developing it.
And I love going into it.
And hopefully you will also like it as well.
But check out the CFCamp.org website for all the latest sessions, information, speakers.
And all that.
And we'll also include a link to our CFCamp Camp workshops, those two that were mentionedas well.
(14:06):
Those will be happening before the conference.
That's enough of some BoxLang news.
Let's talk about some CFML news and updates.
We have some slides you might want to check out from the one and only Pete Freitag TheCWE, is Common Weakness Web Exploits.
That sounds right.
Because it's not CVE, which is vulnerability.
(14:29):
But this is a presentation he gave.
He put the slides up of 25 web exploits you might want to look for in your app.
Well, a lot of them are like, you know, when you're doing your coding, you know, do this,do that.
So like the number one is cross-site scripting.
He gives you ideas of, you know, what that is and how you can mitigate against it.
(14:50):
Number two, out of bound rights.
And number three, SQL injection, that old chestnut that's been around for like 20 years.
And most CF developers protect ourselves against it because we use cfqueryparam andbindings.
He also goes into the ones you might not have thought of, like hard-coded credentials inyour code instead of using environment variables or secrets, uncontrolled resource
consumption.
(15:11):
I remember running this at the beginning of my coding career where you don't put the limiton a query that someone can run and all of a sudden they're grabbing 30 million records
from a database.
So just things like that.
Great article great presentation and happy to share that here.
Yeah, whenever I go to any sort of conference that Pete's presenting, I'm gonna go there.
(15:31):
It scares you a little bit, but it's also reassuring that, you know, hey, we got this.
And that was at ColdFusion Summit East, which was, I believe, a couple weeks ago, a weekor two ago.
But yeah.
And other big CFML update news, Masa CMS version 7.5 is released.
I excited to get that email yesterday, I think.
New in 7.5, multi-tenant support for Microsoft Entra, Single Sign-On, Factory Scriptupgrades, improved compatibility with 2021 and ACF 2021, 2023, a lot of bug fixes.
(16:02):
They're deprecating some of the old session support, non-Bcrypto passwords and others.
And looking ahead, they're looking to support Adobe ColdFusion 2025.
And can you guess,
Wait, where's our sound effect?
I wasn't ready.
No.
Nope, this one.
Live.
(16:24):
Is it BoxLang?
Yeah!
You know, I was waiting for a cymbal crash at the end of that, but I guess not.
that joke will land better next time when I'm ready for it.
Sorry everybody.
Again, it's a new format.
We're just feeling it out.
Yeah.
Congratulations to Masa on the release.
Absolutely.
Good job guys and keep doing what you're doing.
(16:45):
And if you're not, don't know who Masa is, they are an open source fork of what Mura usedto be.
Mura was a great product, great content management system.
They had to make some changes.
Masa forked it and they're moving forward.
if you can't use Content Box for any reason, I don't know why you couldn't, but if youcan't use it, check out Masa.
Or just check them out anyway because you know what?
(17:06):
Variety is the spice of life.
Or I believe one of the Into the Box sessions this year is migrating from Mura and Masa toContentBox come to Into the Box, go to that session by Jon Clausen and come jump on the
modernize train.
Woohoo!
We need a train whistle every time you say the modernize train.
(17:28):
I don't think we got one.
yep, didn't get the horn either.
Anyway, next time things will improve.
Speaking of new releases, Galaxie Blog 4 is out by Gregory Alexander.
This is the blog engine he's been working out.
He details all of the new features and improvements over on his website.
Congrats on the release, Gregory.
Yep, I think one of the big features is it's fast, like really, really fast.
(17:52):
Yeah, it's built on Lucee, which again, they are doing great in that department.
We need to keep chasing them.
Yep.
And then let's do a couple other blog posts we want to touch on.
One thing, you know, the format change, we used to just like talk on and on and on aboutall these great blog posts, but in the interest of time, we're not going to do that like
we used to, but we're going to try and pick out a few highlights here and there.
(18:14):
And...
goal is to keep this to 30 minutes is the goal.
So we're doing okay right now.
Let's see how we do So James Moberg has a very interesting part a post a great title CFFrankenstein choosing to use execute executables instead of CFML BIFs And I read it and I
was like I had never thought about this so using the 7-zip executable instead of the cfzipbecause it's faster
(18:38):
using curl over a cfhttp You know image magic things like that like he's got a whole bunchwkhtml2pdf Yeah, it is very interesting idea I'd love to see all these Like packaged up in
ForgeBox because the idea of trying to manage all those on the system sounds whoo, but
(19:02):
the, has a one for AWS S3, S3 Express.
I think he went from 110 seconds for the built-in services using the Amazon CLI or CLI,took 40 seconds, but with S3 Express, I think he said it took like 16 seconds.
So.
you can check all the different performances that he has there and why he chose the oneshe has.
(19:23):
But yeah, really neat idea.
I don't really think of cfexecute much, so thanks for pulling attention to that.
Absolutely.
Of course that means, what, Windows only?
That's okay.
No, no, you can do the, most of these have Linux equivalents, which is what you're runningon if you're not running on Windows, So, they just don't have .exe at the end.
Nah, fair enough, fair enough.
(19:43):
I'm a Windows guy, I don't always think about some of those others.
No, you've got plenty to hold against me, Like the fact I'm messing up this podcast.
No, not messing up, not at all.
All right, last blog post we want to talk about is from Ben Nadal.
He is exploring variadic function mechanics in ColdFusion.
Variadic meaning varying in size.
(20:05):
So this is where you can call a function and pass 0, 1, 8, a million arguments, and it'sgoing to do stuff about it.
And he goes through the different options, right?
We have the argument scope that you've been able to use.
How can you interact with that?
Lucee and BoxLang have talked about using the REST and SPREAD operators.
(20:25):
I don't think that one's in BoxLang yet, maybe.
Looks like he had trouble with it in any case, so we have something to fix there.
But yeah, I look very forward to the day we have REST and SPREAD, especially SPREAD.
I feel like I use that all the time in JavaScript and I'd use it all the time here in...
for the people that aren't as cool as you and Ben, can you explain what Rest and Spreadis?
(20:46):
Sure, let me see if I can find an example in his code and then...
See if I can make it appear here in Riverside.
We're gonna see.
Everybody hold on.
We'll see.
Right now it's going the ladder.
Share screen and this one.
(21:07):
All right.
Okay, so here is the REST operator in a ColdFusion file, though none of them worked, whichwas sad.
Especially, I read this through and I can see he's only testing Lucee and Adobe and I'msure BoxLang did this because we talked about it, but it wasn't working either.
So these three dots in front of the inputs tells the code everything after every, youknow, the nth argument.
(21:34):
put into an array called inputs.
So you could have A, B, and then dot, dot, dot inputs, and that would be the first onegoes in A, the second in B, and then inputs gets everything else.
Spread is here in line 12, this is using it as an array.
It's saying I have an array, and I want you to put everything in that array into this newone plus whatever else I wanna put in there.
(21:59):
That should also work with objects where you can put all, or structs.
sorry I was talking JavaScripty.
You can put all the keys from the struct into a new struct.
The benefit of this is it's a little less verbose than the struct append.
You don't have to end the order is what determines if you're overriding or not.
So if in the struct you had the spread operator and then you said my key is foo colon bar,even if your spread had foo in it, it would get overwritten.
(22:30):
But if you did it the other way, where foo was on the top and then you spread, the spreadwould overwrite.
Interesting.
So that's rest and spread.
And you can check out that blog post for more info as well.
Okay, well it didn't blow up when we tried to share, All right, we got just a few minutesleft to tell you about some events and some thank yous.
(22:53):
Yep, absolutely.
for the events, obviously the big one that's near and dear to us is Into the Box.
April 30th through May 2nd in Washington, D.C., IntoTheBox.org.
The first day is workshops and then the conference itself is May 1st and 2nd.
Next we have CF Camp, May 22nd and 23rd in Munich, Germany with a special Ortus Solutionsworkshop before on the 21st.
(23:15):
You can find out more at cfcamp.org and again at the link earlier for our Ortus workshops.
Yep.
And then Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2025, it'll be September 22nd and 23rd.
That's the one that's in Vegas.
Vegas, baby!
Where they do it every fall.
If you want to get certified, you can do that either on September 21st or 24th.
(23:35):
If you go to the website, there's more information.
I don't know if they've even got a call for speakers yet on that, but they just, you know,they just wrapped up CF Summit East and now they're going to be
taking care of that.
So yeah, it's a really good conference too.
If you can't come to ITB, then at least try to go to like CF Camp or Adobe Summit, CFSummit.
Which I think are the only three ColdFusion conferences, right?
(23:57):
I'm not missing anybody.
I believe you're right.
Yeah, those are the...
and West, but CF Summit.
Yeah, yeah.
Those are the only ones that have dedicated ColdFusion tracks.
We try to take ColdFusion to DevNexus right?
And Into the Box is ColdFusion plus right?
BoxLang, ColdFusion, and more.
So.
This year we took BoxLang to DevNexus and it was all about the BoxLang and I got to go andI was talking BoxLang to all these Java devs and full disclosure, I'm not a Java dev.
(24:27):
I mean I know some but I do not identify as a Java developer.
I am a future BoxLang developer.
No, I'm a BoxLang developer now.
Yeah, you know, I still don't, I still don't really identify as a Java developer, butgiven the amount of Java code I've written for BoxLang, I probably should change that.
Yep.
Yep, yep, yep.
(24:48):
Well, that brings us to the end today into our thank you section.
We love to thank our Patreon supporters.
These are individuals personally supporting our open source initiatives, great toolingslike CommandBox ForgeBox, ColdBox, ContentBox, you name it.
Their contributions also help fund the cloud infrastructure that we rely on at ForgeBoxfor package management in the CFML and BoxLang community.
(25:09):
You can join us at patreon.com/ortussolutions .
There's lots of fun perks and even discounts for annual memberships.
Go ahead and go take a look there.
well if you pay for the year you save 10 % and if you do the bronze package and up you nowget a ForgeBox Pro and CFCasts subscription as a perk.
All Patreon supporters have a profile badge on the Ortus Community website.
There is a private forum access on the community website.
(25:33):
And you have your own private channel on the BoxTeam Slack.
That's the Ortus Box Team Slack channel.
You can come in and chat with us.
We have many lovely sponsors.
can see them all at ortussolutions.com/about-us/sponsors as part of again rebranding thepodcast.
We're not sure how we want to call out our lovely Patreon supporters.
(25:53):
Are we going to keep doing the adjectives each time?
Are we going to keep the top supporters?
Are we going to read out one person's name?
We'll see.
We'll probably try a few things.
But for today, we're going to thank everybody that has supported us on Patreon, companiesand individuals.
Thank you for supporting us and this podcast.
We hope you liked some of the changes and feel free to send us your feedback.
(26:14):
If you're interested in sponsoring that section that we have from Ortus, reach out on ourContact Us form.
We'd love to talk to you and help you reach this awesome CFML and BoxLang community.
Absolutely, again, thank you again everybody.
Have a great Tuesday.
Happy Tuesday.
Bye.
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