I'm writing this editorial on the way home from CFNorth in Toronto. It was, I can honestly say, one of the best times I've had at a conference, ColdFusion or otherwise. This was the case for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the amazing effort that Kevin Towes and his team put forth in creating the most CF-friendly environment possible, with, simply put, some of the best speakers and the biggest names in the industry.

When I was first asked to give a keynote at the show, two thoughts immediately crossed my mind. The first was, "What the heck can I say for an hour that anyone wants to hear?" Quick calls to a few friends gave me the answer: not much.

The second was that they were anticipating 300 attendees, and I haven't spoken in front of that many people since my Bar Mitzvah some 10 years ago. An idea popped into my head to lead a panel discussion instead, a CFDJ panel. The team here at the magazine and I as the editor are in the unique position of being able to watch and to cover the whole industry. It's an always interesting task, and I thought the best option was to bring that to the conference as a collective effort rather than just rambling on by myself for an hour.

The end result was that we did the first-ever CFDJ Authors Panel keynote at the show, which I think went quite well. It's a shame we didn't tape it for posterity - we'll have to do that next time. Taking part on the panel were Charlie Arehart, Ben Forta, Hel Helms, Michael Smith, and yours truly (with the easier job of throwing questions that you submitted to the panel). We covered a wide range of topics, from Windows versus Linux (the consensus was yes, one of the two will work for you) to the new features in CFMX and the overall direction the industry is heading toward.

One of the centerpieces of the conference was the overall celebration of the MX announcements. ColdFusion MX is by far the most anticipated new release in ColdFusion history. It's been rewritten, and reengineered, from the ground up.

This advancement is good for anyone developing in ColdFusion, from beginner to advanced, and from those creating the smallest intranet to the largest dot-com site. ColdFusion is sometimes stereotyped as a weak language, a language for beginners. I think it's been unfairly pegged as such because of how easy it is to get up and running fast writing your first CF apps. Easy is often equated with being bad in the IT world. The truth is that it's very easy to write simple ColdFusion applications, and that's one reason ColdFusion has been so successful as a product, CFML as a language, and the whole package as an application server.

But saying it's easy to get started doesn't give us or the language the credit we deserve. Writing good applications is just as important a task on the ColdFusion server as it is on any other development platform. And CF programs can be just as complex as anything else available today. MX extends that even further, and the new release brings to the masses several formerly "higher-level" features, which you can take advantage of as much or as little as you choose.

Those developing jointly in Java and ColdFusion will be in heaven with the application server now running atop the J2EE platform. What makes ColdFusion so great for developers of all experience levels and sizes is that it's up to you: if you want to, you can ignore all the new stuff and write CF as you always have - and it'll run better than ever. Or you can leap deeper into the world of Internet application development and be, I think, pleasantly surprised by the powerful sites you can create. ColdFusion Developer's Journal is here to help you with whichever path you choose. So read on!