You should never shy away from adding another language to your personal repertoire.

ColdFusion is bloated IMO. Didn't I say just that in the OP? :-) But if you think you have a need for it, knock your socks off! It's a fun and easy language that a lot of sites still use.

But Perl is faster, more powerful, and much, much cheaper. A side by side comparison isn't really necessary. It's maybe 10-20% faster to code up a database-to-web app in CFML. Spend a few weeks coding in ColdFusion if you don't believe me. But Perl is FREE. And it's FAST. And you can do more than just database-to-web apps! That's all it boils down to.

Alakaboo