Welcome everyone.

This is a Modernize or Die Podcast, Episode 239 on August 19th, 2025.

My name is Daniel Garcia.

I am a Senior Developer at Ortus Solutions.

I am joined by...

Jacob Beers, also a Senior Developer at Ortus Solutions.

How you doing, Jacob?

I'm doing really good, how are you?

I had a rough morning.

I'm going be honest.

I'm like, you know, knocking stuff over.

Things are crashing around, couldn't find cables.

It's been a mess, but I'm better now.

You know why?

Because I'm here with you hanging out and we're doing this podcast, the Modernize or Die
podcast.

So let's just...

it should.

It should.

Because I'm here, I'm ready, I'm feeling good and let's go.

So,

Let's start off with Ortus News.

And so a big one is we've got a CBWire.

We've got a step-by-step look at reactive UI components for BoxLang and modern CFML
developers.

And so if you want to check that out, we just talk about all the coolness that's in CBWire
and something else we're to be talking about a little bit later is a workshop, a CBWire

workshop in Vegas around the time of CF Summit.

But if you want to get kind of a sneak peek on some of that, go check out that blog.

It's going to tell you about, you know, how the different pieces and components of CBWire.

And if you don't know what CBWire is, go check it out.

Should we tell them what CBWire is?

Or should I just have him go look at it?

What?

Do you want to tell him to see the wires?

them with absolutely.

Yeah.

So CBWire is a, um it's a UI library that allows you to write your uh user interface on
the ColdFusion side.

And then it gets streamed over to the client and allows you to basically be able to write
everything in ColdFusion, but then deliver a browser-based experience.

It's a very awesome.

And every time I've, I haven't gotten to use it in a professional project yet.

But every time I've done the tutorial or done something personal, I've always been blown
away by how cool it is.

very cool.

And Grant Copley, one of our Ortus buds, coworkers, peeps, whatever adjective you want to
use, is the architect behind CBWire and has done an awesome job.

And he'll be in there in Vegas with Luis doing this workshop on September 24th to 25th.

So again, we're going to talk about it a little bit, but wanted just to give that shout
out.

Next up, we've got a...

a blog article about TestBox and what's coming.

And so some of the things we've got coming up in the, first of all, TestBox has got over
3.5 million installations and counting, which is kind of crazy when you think about it.

And it's been around for, I don't know, how many years.

Version seven is coming in 2025.

So what's new, full BoxLang compatibility.

You can do all your specs.

in BoxLang or mix it with CFML.

We got some new language keys in your BoxJSON.

We've got some other features and tools, dynamic assertions, BoxLang runner.

I'm really just kind of cleaning it all up.

And I believe there's a smarter IDE integration.

I hear there's native support for the VS Code Test Explorer.

Is that true?

Yeah, there is.

That's uh something that Luis has been working on and it looks pretty great.

That is awesome.

what would that mean then?

Just when you're working on your project, you're, obviously they're using the VS Code
extension, BoxLang extension, right?

Or is this a separate extension?

This is actually a separate extension.

So we have one for BoxLang but then we also have a special one for TestBox .

And the thing that's really great about this is that um you can use it across multiple
technologies, like Adobe, Lucee, things like that.

But you also get very tight integration into the VS Code editor experience where you can
click buttons to run tests automatically.

You get output and metrics in your test results panel.

It's pretty sophisticated.

And then coming new or coming soon in TestBox 7x official BoxLang module BX TestBox code
coverage for BoxLang, async testing support, data providers, lots and lots of stuff,

including compatibility with Adobe CF 2023 plus.

So that's definitely some exciting news for TestBox.

I know it's one of those things that the people that love it absolutely love it.

And the people that don't love it maybe don't really know what it is or use it the way
they should.

But you should because testing is important.

Do you disagree.

Yep, if you don't love it, that's your problem.

If you don't love it, that's your problem.

I think we need a sticker for that one.

Jacob, let's talk to the marketing team on that one.

So, coming up along with TestBox, we've got the CommandBox state and what's coming up
next.

So do know how long CommandBox has been out?

Jacob, or you can look at the blog article, but.

going to cheat.

Open book.

Actually, I can't find it.

Eight years.

12 years.

It's been 12 years on the market.

Isn't that crazy?

It's almost a teenager.

let me get this link here.

Hope it doesn't rebel.

Oh, I'm, well, I'm sure Brad's got it firmly in hand if it ever were to do that.

So, um, CommandBox by the numbers 12 years in the market, 47 total releases, 765 pull
requests of that core had 339, modules 244, and docs 242.

I think I've got one or two in there somewhere.

Only one or two, but still I'm on the team.

Um,

It's active and growing.

CommandBox powers the CFML world.

1.2 million million Adobe CF installs.

1.8 million, I'm sorry.

1.6 million Lucee installs.

8,000 BoxLang installs is pretty crazy considering BoxLang just officially launched a few
months ago.

So the CommandBox based Docker image has 1.8 million pulls.

now what is the CommandBox Docker image and i use this a lot as well

Yeah, actually the CommandBox based Docker image is my favorite way to deploy ColdFusion
hands down.

So for those of you who don't know, Ortus has an officially supported Docker image that
has CommandBox installed right out of the box.

And it also has a lot of uh really great configuration to make it easy to deploy a server
out to any cloud provider or if you have like a, you know, Docker swarm or Portainer set

up if you wanted to do that.

So I highly recommend going out to Docker Hub and looking up Ortus Solutions there.

And you can see all of the great features we offer.

you happen to be in DC, Washington DC this year at our workshop, you would have saw some
of that.

Mm-hmm.

So also just really quick, Docker CommandBox supports a bunch of different versions of CF
engines all the way from Java 11 through Java 24.

And so just some quick highlights, what's new in 6.1, the server Lucee deploy for Lucee
servers, web socket support with SocketBox a bunch of different library updates.

And in 6.2, they've got things like Jakarta serverless support compatible with 25, Lucee 7
and BoxLang.

support for some namespaces, server warmup URLs.

I'm surprised we didn't have this before, to be honest.

Server warmup URLs define one or more URLs to hit on server startup.

Server start, once the server's up and running, have a URL to hit.

And that is extremely useful because a lot of times you need to initialize your
application somehow by hitting a certain endpoint or building a cache or doing whatever.

Well, this will allow you to do all that.

And so,

Yeah, so coming up next full BoxLang integration, Windows Service Manager, more caching,
more goodness, but go check out that blog post.

You'll see it.

And so at this time, I'd to take a moment and give a shout out to Daniel, I'm going to
mispronounce his name.

I met him a few times and I feel really dumb.

Daniel Mejia.

I always refer to him as Other Daniel, but I'm sorry, buddy.

I should know how to pronounce your name and I don't.

Daniel M.

How about that?

Thank you for tuning in.

Okay, so this episode is sponsored by, we kind of talked about this already, but CB Wire.

BoxLang and CB Wire is the perfect stack for modern reactive development.

So anyway, you're ready to level it up.

We've got a two day CBWire workshop right after the CF Summit 2025 led by creators Grant
Copley and Luis Majano.

There are uh a few spots available, but I think they are filling up.

If you want to learn more and register, we'll get the link out there to you.

Okay, so Jacob, what's new in the world of BoxLang?

Well, we've got some pretty cool things to announce today.

We've got a blog post about modernizing your projects without limits.

This is about a new pioneer license that we're offering so that people who are part of the
community and want to be a part of our vision for BoxLang can get involved that way.

It's a very, one thing I love about a BoxLang and what we're doing at Ortus is that we
have a very, what I think is a very fair license.

And we also try to keep all of our

all of the contractual parts of that, you know, above the table so that it's easy to
understand what you're agreeing to and what you're getting out of it.

And so this article kind of goes over some of those things and helps you to make an
informed decision about partnering with us.

And, and this is similar to a regular license, but I think one of the coolest things is
the dedicated migration support at no extra cost.

I think its very, very compelling.

And, yeah.

So go check that out.

We've got some new, modules coming out, new libraries, BX Redis, BX PDF, BX plus BX FS,
the BoxLang admin beta scheduled for winter of 2025.

Let's bring it to 2026.

We're already talking version 2.0 betas.

So, ain't no rest for the weary.

Is that how the song goes?

Where's the ain't no rest for the wicked?

My son would know.

Okay.

So moving along with that,

So next up we've got deploying blocks, blocks, BoxLang in the cloud video series.

We have three videos up right now.

And if you ever wanted to try and deploy BoxLang in the cloud, this is a great way to get
started.

So you'll learn how to do BoxLang Mini Server for Windows, Ubuntu, Red Hat, BoxLang with
CommandBox for Windows, Ubuntu and Red Hat.

That's what the entire series will cover.

Exploring multiple deployment methods.

For me, you can do Mini Server and there's nothing wrong with it, but I'm a CommandBox
person.

I love CommandBox.

CommandBox is awesome.

And if you're take the time to learn how to do this, I would just go straight to the
awesomeness.

Now you can use Mini Server.

There's nothing wrong with Mini Server.

But CommandBox is really awesome.

Agree.

so of course, if you want to watch those, uh, you can go to the BoxLang Academy or CFCasts
but the entire series will be available for free on both.

Um, so go ahead and check that out.

And then going up to the BoxLang community, our buddy, Raymond Camden, he's got a couple
of posts.

you want to talk about that, Jacob, or do you want me to.

m

always, Raymond is setting a very, very quick pace of um putting out articles that have a
lot of great information in them.

he's got two for us this week.

One of them is about URL uh rewriting with the BoxLang Mini Server.

This is a gotcha for a lot of people who are coming from CommandBox and want to experiment
with just the Mini Server itself.

And sometimes it's a little bit surprising all the things that CommandBox does for you out
of the...

off the bat.

So this kind of shows you how to set up uh URL rewrites, which are usually done for you
through CommandBox with some sensible defaults.

But this shows you how to set that up when you're using the BoxLang mini server, which can
be a little bit tricky if you haven't done it before.

So definitely check out that article if you're interested there.

And then we've also got a string bind article, ah which is pretty, yeah, I didn't either.

um It's interesting though, it looks like a, uh

kind of an interesting way to maybe handle templating if you don't want to use a full
template file for it or if you want something more dynamic.

So yeah, that's pretty interesting.

So if want to go check those out, yeah, I'm reading it.

I'm like, I had no idea that was supported in other languages either.

Or that's not just a BoxLang thing, right?

That's a, I may need to read the article again, but I definitely check that out.

And I think that rounds out what's going on in Ortus world and BoxLang land.

And so let's go to the CFML updates.

So first off, we got our buddy Pete Freitag If you don't know who Pete Freitag is, go find
him at petefreitag.com.

His company is Foundeo.

If you want to be scared and stay awake at night, go check out his, any of his
presentations at any ColdFusion conference anywhere.

He does a lot of security related things and it's definitely worth watching.

Here, he's uh got a blog post about generating six digit security codes in Java or CFML.

And with that, he's using the Java functions, I believe the Java security, secure random
object kind of talks about how if you want to do something a little bit more secure, that

this is a good way of doing it.

want to dive too much into it.

Anything Pete does, I highly recommend checking out.

He's also the person that does HackMyCF FuseGuard.

and lots of other great things for the community and CFdocs.org.

I think he is the person that kind of initially put that together for the community.

Yeah, a lot of great projects that help a lot of people.

Pete's a good guy.

And then next, our buddy Ben Nadel Do you want to talk about this one?

Ooh, I was afraid you would say that.

But yeah, I'll take a stab at it.

No, think this is a great article.

It's a little bit controversial if you like to argue about pedantic things like uh
programming patterns and things like that.

so Ben Nadel is exploring some different functional patterns that you can do in
ColdFusion.

And one of those is about the usage of the filter function when working with arrays.

ah And so he wrote kind of an interesting article where he explores using the filter
function for more than just filtering, but actually modifying and mutating the data that

you're looking at.

It was a really great article.

The comments are very entertaining, as you may expect whenever something gets brought up
like that on the internet.

So definitely go check that out and decide which side of the fence you land on with that
argument.

So, you know, I didn't even look at the comments.

I was just looking at the, at the meat of it, the article itself.

Oh, there's one from Adam Cameron.

I think you're missing the whole use of the for the job concept.

Oh, I haven't seen Adam in a while.

You know, I'm going have to go through these later and read through them.

I should have done that.

I was busy doing other things.

ah Yeah, I will say I actually sat down and I read through all of the comments, all of
them, in preparation for this meeting.

And I actually thought that there was a really great reason discussion that kind of
explains why you would choose to use the filter function for only filtering.

And so I think that if you're interested in that theory and the practical reasons about
why you may or may not do that, I think it's a great read.

So definitely go through that and look at the different perspectives.

Moving right along.

There's some big news out in AI land.

Do you want to talk about that?

Yeah, sure.

We've got a couple of interesting things from OpenAI this past week.

Probably, I think most people have probably heard of these things, at least a little bit
by now, but OpenAI has announced ChatGPT 5, which speaking of internet drama, was of

course a very dramatic launch as well.

So the interesting thing there is that if you're using ChatGPT, if you're using like say
the Box API module or things like that, you'll need to make sure that it doesn't change

its answers too much.

if you're using that for anything important compared to older models.

So check out their blog post there.

And then the other piece of news that we have from them, which I personally think is maybe
a little bit more exciting, is that they recently released some open source models that

you can download and run locally that are versions of their um premier models that they've
packaged up and released to the community for free.

And they're calling those GPT-OSS.

So you can go and check that out and...

uh

maybe even have your very own ChatGPT pet running locally.

It sounds like a fun little project for somebody with too much time on their hands.

Jacob.

Well, you don't have too much time, so.

That's alright, I'll make time.

Nice.

Yeah.

Speaking of the controversy, I got to kick out of this.

So, I actually use ChatGPT and Claude when I'm doing stuff, both personally and side stuff
and a little bit here and there.

And I like them.

I like Claude for development stuff.

Like say if I have to work on a PowerShell script that, know, not as, you know, keen on
PowerShell, but Claude comes right through and gives me good stuff and it gets me there

far enough where I can take it and work with it and get what I need.

So I appreciate it.

And then ChatGPT has been great for just like.

things in general.

And, um, there's a lot of blowback controversy because when they released GPT-5, they went
and I believe they got rid of GPT-4, which upset a lot of people.

Like not just from a technical level, but like an emotional level, like they're
emotionally invested in GPT-4 and were like, very, very upset.

So I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I suppose in one instance, if you're a company and you've got a fan base that that's

connected so much, that's great.

But on the other hand, if you've got a people that are just that connected to something
like this, that maybe that could be worrisome.

I don't know.

Thoughts?

Well, I think, you know, the way that I've heard it kind of summed up is that ChatGPT-4
was very affirming and it was very much a cheerleader for you.

Like, oh, you're getting to the heart of the discussion.

What an interesting insight kind of thing.

And uh ChatGPT-5 is a little bit more like, here's the answer.

What else do you want me to say?

And so I can understand some of the tone of that, but you're right.

You know, there's a, it's a tool and we need to learn how to use it appropriately.

Yep.

It's completely fair.

If you're like, GPT four gave me better answers from technical aspect.

that's completely fair.

But just to, you know, GPT four made me feel better.

It's like, well, okay.

That's not, not saying that's not fair, but it was just interesting.

I was, I was not expecting this to read that when I saw the news.

Okay, that's rounding out the world of CFML.

So now let's go through some events coming up.

And in case you missed it, we've got a build a BoxLang app webinar with Raymond Camden,
that guy.

This was done, I want to say last month, the July webinar, maybe.

Yeah, I think so.

But the August webinar, which will be tomorrow, is leveling up your async game with
BoxLang with our own Jon Clausen That'll be August 20th, which is tomorrow.

I don't know why I had to look at the calendar.

11 a.m.

Chicago time.

I mean, central time.

Free tickets available to register.

It's always free, but you need to register to make sure that you get in to where you can
get into the actual webinar.

I'm really excited about this talk.

I think that our async tools in BoxLang are top notch.

I've been getting to use them a little bit more extensively lately, and I've been so
impressed by everything that I come across with them.

And I know that Jon Clausen has put in a lot of work into leveraging virtual threads to
make async processes more performant.

And I don't even know all the things that he's done.

Not that he hasn't told me, I just didn't understand it.

But I'm really looking forward to hearing him go into more detail about those things.

Nice, nice, nice.

This next event was kind of cool.

I had heard rumblings about it, but I hadn't really looked at it.

The JJUG night seminar, BoxLang and New Dynamic JVM Language is this week.

And you know what JJUG stands for?

I don't, please tell me.

Let's write in the notes, read the notes.

This is the Japan Java User Group.

Join us for an in-person Japan Java User Group night seminar featuring our very own Luis
Majano.

Creator of BoxLang, it's going to introduce BoxLang a new dynamic language for the JVM
built for developer productivity, flexibility and innovation.

So what's really cool about this is BoxLang, so we've been going out with BoxLang to the
Java world.

And we've been doing a lot of presentations.

say we, I mean the Royal we, Luis, um, mostly, but it's been going out to all these
different Java groups and it's been presenting on BoxLang.

We've got a pretty positive reception on that.

Um, which is cool.

And I'm like, Luis is here.

Luis is there.

Where else is he?

Where it's like, where in the world is Luis Majano?

It's from Carmen SanDiego reference for anyone that grew up in the eighties like me.

So it's really awesome to see them just like popping up all over the place with these JVM
conferences.

Next, I'm going have you talk about this next item.

All right, Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2025 plus CBWire Workshop.

Looking forward to that.

I'm looking forward to it extra on a personal note because I will get to attend ColdFusion
Summit 2025 as a speaker.

So I'm really excited about that.

But also Grant Copley will be attending as a speaker.

He's giving a talk on managing legacy code and...

I'll be honest with you, I caught little bits of that talk at ITB last year and it changed
my life as Yeah, it was really fantastic.

I probably need to tell him that because it was so great, but I've referenced it probably
five times with customers since that talk.

So definitely check that out if you're going to CF Summit 2025, because it's fantastic.

And then after that, I'll be presenting on 20 tips for using Git, the cleverly named Git
Smarter talk.

So definitely come and check that out.

And I'd be happy to tell you some of the things I've been learning about Git, which will
hopefully be helpful to you as well.

Nice.

They both sound like great talks, sorry I'm going to miss it this year.

Um, was not able to work it out.

But maybe you can give those talks next year too at ITB.

Yeah, yeah, maybe.

That'd be awesome.

And speaking of ITB, ITB 2026 is now out with the call for speakers is open.

If you haven't yet, please go to the, site and start uh, submitting topics.

Cause you know, you want to come to ITB 2026 and you know, you want to be a presenter.

So the call for speakers, if you want to go ahead and start doing that.

think Jacob, you're the first person to submit internally, if I'm not mistaken.

I am the first and currently only person to submit internally.

Yeah, so Daniel, what are you doing?

You need to go submit some talks.

I know I've been busy, doing stuff.

Podcast stuff and client stuff and there's no excuse.

It's not like I'd be preparing for summit or anything.

I should have time in my hands, but.

I will get on there.

I don't know if I'm going to put up for a workshop again or not, but that was a lot of
work last year and the year before.

They're fun and I really enjoyed working with you on the workshop this year.

Okay, next up we've got the ITB video series is now live on CFCast.

This is for online and on-site ticket holders.

You should have free access.

If you do not, please reach out.

Patreons get free access to the series as a token of appreciation for your ongoing support
to our mission of modernizing software development.

And if you haven't been there or aren't a Patreon, our series is available to purchase for
just $250 on demand, lifetime access, or if you're a regular CF subscriber, it's going to

be released, I believe on November 1st.

So if you can't wait that long, you've got some ways of getting it, but go ahead and check
that out.

Now I will say that any of the BoxLang presentations or videos, I believe are free on both
platforms.

I know definitely on the BoxLang Academy.

So if there was some BoxLang sessions, then you didn't go and you don't have access to it,
you can still go see those.

Also, we've got our CF Camp slides and recordings up on our own Ortus channel, our YouTube
channel.

You can just watch some of different videos.

Finally, we've got Inside The Box series are now up and live on CFCast and soon to be
released on BoxLang Academy and YouTube to watch for free and on demand.

These were recorded live at Into The Box 2025.

The, oh really?

I didn't see this part.

I think Majo added something.

Man.

So I actually did a lot of interviews with people.

I'm wondering if these are my interviews when I was at Into The Box.

Excuse me.

If he says captures great conversations, speakers, sponsors, and special guests as they
share their stories, technical insights, and honest perspectives on BoxLang what do you

want to bet Jacob that they crop me out of everything?

I doubt it.

Check that out.

Cool.

Well, that kind of made my day.

I I'll be doing in the background while I'm working this afternoon, be playing these
interviews and seeing how they came out.

Anyway, it's about that time, Jacob.

So we want to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters, these individuals
personally supporting our open source initiatives to ensure great toolings like

CommandBox, ForgeBox, ColdBox, ContentBox, TestBox, and all the other boxes, including
BoxLang.

Contributions fund the cloud infrastructure our community relies on, ForgeBox Package
Management, and you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash Ortus Solutions.

Now tell us, Jacob.

What they have any memberships, what do they get?

What do they get from memberships in general?

when you get an annual membership, you pay for the year and you get saved 10%, which is
pretty great.

Bronze packages and up, get a ForgeBox Pro and CFCast subscription as a perk for their
Patreon support.

All Patreon supporters have a profile badge on our community website.

All Patreon supporters have their own private forum access on the community website, so
you can get direct help with the challenges that you may run into.

And then all Patreon supporters have their own private channel access on BoxTeam Slack,
which is pretty great because we're very, very attentive to that.

We're attentive to all of our community portals, but especially the Slack.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

If you ask a question and nobody responds, I can go in and do it @jbeers And he shows up
to answer all your VS code extension questions in particular.

So right now we're up to 61 Patreons, I believe, which is awesome.

You can see an up-to-date list of all our sponsors on the Ortus Solutions website,
ortussolutions.com slash about hyphen us slash sponsors.

And with that, Jacob, we made it.

another episode of Modernize or Die Podcast.

Yep, that's all right.

Another one in the box.

another one in the, I like that, another one into the box.

There we go, thank you everybody for coming out and we will see you all again real soon.

Bye.

All right, bye.