This is a dark and heart-sinking day for ColdFusion and its developers. Adobe has–not merged, which would be bad enough–but acquired Macromedia.

I first heard about it by someone telling me, and they couldn’t remember if Macromedia bought out Adobe or vice versa. I was very hopeful that Macromedia bought out Adobe, because in general I have never been impressed with Adobe’s presence on the web.

Granted, the PDF document type has been revolutionary for the web, but it has simply extended the paper mindset. Adobe feels clunky and old. The Acrobat Reader is slow and big, and it fundamentally does nothing but give you a perfectly formatted piece of paper on a computer screen. Meanwhile, Macromedia’s direction was toward the modernism of the web. Although perfectly formatted portable documents was an element in the vision, it was only that: An element of a greater vision that was focused on small, fast, and powerful digital interfaces, that were dynamic and responsive, oh so much more than what Adobe has been offering.

Furthermore, their web authoring tools have always left much to be desired for me.

In the Adobe/Macromedia Acquisition FAQs (go figure, an ugly PDF document; go get your coffee as you wait for it to load), Adobe attempts to address just these kinds of concerns. Seriously, would you say anything but good things about the future of the acquired company’s products in the heat of the acquisition? Whereas I feel Adobe respects Macromedia for its powerful intuition and innovation, I fear that it will not reflect such strengths when the acquisition has come and gone and the new futures of products like ColdFusion–which are our livlihood for some of us–are to be decided.

Maybe it would be a good time to start learning up on Java and PHP…