I had 2 startups in total that were CF based, and still have a business running on ColdFusion (or a legacy version of it that is still in use). And yes, at it's prime, when choice was limited and 1 core was plenty, it was the best way to get a web application going. I actually welcomed the Java days since the original had enough issues that were resolved and having access to the JVM and it's ecosystem was a great thing. At this point ColdFusion became a JSP tag library. However, I cannot compare it to today's tech. It's not apples to apples.