You know what's worse than a ColdFusion app with no framework?

A ColdFusion app with a homebrewed, undocumented, fragile, ego-fueled “framework” that someone cobbled together in 2014 and named after themselves.

Yes, I’m talking about your “ItsGary” folder, Gary. It’s 2025. We have to stop this madness.

Decoding the Developer’s Psyche (and Code)

When our team inherits one of these codebases, we know we’re in for a ride the second we see:

• A utils.cfm file with 1,000+ lines and no comments.
  
  
• Custom router logic with hand-written URL parsing using mid() and find().
  
  
• Functions named like superDoer() or loadMagicDataThingy().
  
  
• Your company’s name hardcoded directly into function names.
  
  
• (Spoiler: sendEmailToSteveCEO() doesn’t scale.)
  
  
• Or even better: your email address in the comments.
  
  
• <!-- Email me if this breaks: frank@notadevteam.com -->
  
  

Yes, Frank. We will email you. Every time it crashes. From now until the end of time.

“But We Paid a Lot for This!”

Clients often come to us with a codebase they swear is mission-critical, battle-tested, and “just needs a few tweaks.” And then we open the hood and find a burning trash fire being held together by duct tape and good intentions.

Worse, the client paid real money for this—a lot of it.

You’d be amazed how many six-figure apps we've seen built with:

• Zero documentation.
  
  
• No version control.
  
  
• No reusable components.
  
  
• Business logic sprinkled like glitter across random files.
  
  
• Global variables being passed around like party favors.
  
  

This isn’t a framework. It’s a hostage situation.

Our Cleanup Process (a.k.a. Professional Archaeology)

Here’s what we do when we inherit one of these “custom masterpieces”:

1. Assess the blast radius. We start with a tour of the “framework.” We try not to cry.
   
   
2. Reverse-engineer the routing. Usually from scratch. Because Gary didn’t comment anything.
   
   
3. Find the landmines. Where are the assumptions? Hardcoded paths? Private contact info embedded in templates?
   
   
4. Start to normalize. Extract what we can into CFCs, modules, and views. Rip out the hardcoded junk. Introduce a real framework (ColdBox, FW/1, etc.).
   
   
5. Write documentation that should’ve existed all along.
   
   
6. Tell the client the truth. That yes, what they have works, but it was never designed to be stable, extensible, or maintained by anyone who didn’t share a bloodline with the original developer.
   
   

Red Flags We See Immediately

Want to know how we can spot a problem child at a glance?

• All files live in /root, and half of them are index.cfm.
  
  
• Every other file is test.cfm, old.cfm, or final_final.cfm.
  
  
• No Application.cfc, just a dusty Application.cfm.
  
  
• <cfinclude>s nested 5-deep like a Matryoshka doll.
  
  
• No functions at all—just procedural code all the way down.
  
  
• Session-scoped global state. Everywhere. No shame.
  
  

Final Words from the Grump

Dear business owners: you deserve better than duct-taped code written in the developer’s own language, custom framework, and worldview.

And developers: your name doesn’t belong in function names, in comments, or in error messages.

If you want to invent your own framework, go ahead. But document it, structure it, test it, and support it—or just use one of the great frameworks that already exist. Don’t roll your own just because you "don’t like how ColdBox looks" or "it seems like overkill."

If you built it and even you can’t explain it... We’ve got a problem.

Thankfully, WRIS specializes in solving those problems. One spaghetti strand at a time.