BoxLang 1.13: What Ortus Solutions’ JVM Language Means for the Future of CFML

BoxLang is a modern, dynamic JVM language created by Ortus Solutions (the team behind CommandBox, ColdBox, and TestBox) that runs your existing CFML natively while giving CFML developers a fresh, multi-runtime language for the next decade. It combines ideas from Java, CFML, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP into a low-verbosity syntax, and — crucially for CFML teams — it uses a dual-parser design so you can run applications written in CFML within BoxLang natively, with a compatibility module preserving legacy behavior. It’s open source (Apache 2, with an optional BoxLang+ subscription for enhanced support) and deploys across an unusually wide set of runtimes: the JVM/OS, web servers and servlet containers, AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions, iOS/Android, and WebAssembly, with CommandBox as its package/server/REPL tooling. The 1.13.0 release (April 30, 2026) — themed “Compatibility, Concurrency, and Formatter Maturity” — closed 48 issues focused on production hardening: deeper CFML compatibility (SOAP headers, query.setColumnNames()), async/concurrency reliability fixes, and a production-ready code formatter with a CI check mode. For CFML teams, BoxLang matters because it offers a forward path that runs today's CFML while modernizing the language, runtimes, and tooling underneath it — from the same vendor whose tools you likely already use. This guide covers what BoxLang is, what 1.13 delivered, and what it means for CFML's future.
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