Blackstone is the code name for the next version of ColdFusion. There has been a lot of talk on the net about this new version. People are posting their thoughts on what needs to change, what needs to be added, and what should be removed from this new version.
I haven’t developed the in-depth mind-meld that a lot of these people have so I can’t tell you what’s wrong or what needs to be added for the next version. However I did find a post by Ben Forta in which he talks a bit about a future feature which was supposed to be in CFMX but didn’t make it.
He talks about the ability to run CFML code with out the source! As he puts it “There were no smoke-and-mirrors involved, I really did write CFML code, compile it, and then run the application without local source”.
How cool would this be! Without the source code our customers wouldn’t be able to go in and muck up or nice applications, and they wouldn’t be able to steal our hours of time with a simple cut-paste operation. Sure you can Encode your current templates now but this isn’t the same idea here. I envision something more like Java where we can compile our code and then just send over the .class files or a .jar file and have everything hum, for the most part.
So what kinds of stuff would you like to see in Blackstone?
Eric Jones
