I know this thread is mad old, but for anyone else out there reading this, ColdFusion actually is a great web scripting language to learn. And I'll give ya a few reasons why! :p
#1, its easy. The whole point of the language was to make development quick, easy, and straightforward. No having to learn how to connect to databases, no having to learn strange syntax that would look like gibberish to anyone who hasn't programmed before, etc.
#2, its tag based. HTML is tag based. Your CF tags fit right in with your HTML tags, and you can also maintain correct indentation and code format in your files, unlike php and asp. No having to open php tags and echo out certain parts of your code or build HTML strings with a mix of HTML tags and php script when creating say, the options in an HTML select box. ColdFusion fits seemlessly.
Also, the tags are straightforward, and common things like looping out query results from a database are as simple as <cfloop query="myQuery">...</cfloop> rather than some of the more complex code I've seen to read and output results from a database query in other languages.
#3, it has come a long way since the early days. You can now create native ColdFusion objects (ColdFusion components), implement object oriented design patterns (if you so choose), and there is a tag or function for pretty much everything you would ever want to do on a web server. Some of these even include transferring files between servers using FTP (or SFTP), creating flash animated charts based on some data that you have, and editing images all directly from your .cfm files. The best part is, these things take a minimal amount of coding on your part (basically, you just specify what you want, and ColdFusion does the rest).
#4, If that is not enough for you, most people don't realize that ColdFusion is built on Java, which means that you can instantiate any Java class that is registered with the server's JVM.
You like using Java's Vector class for your arrays instead of using ColdFusion's (for whatever reason), go right ahead!
Want to use a non-standard library for a particular function? You can do that as well. I wrote an application once that built an excel file with all the bells and whistles, calculations, and other things that excel provides (that cannot be created with the usual HTML table creation method) using Apache's POI HSSF library that I installed right on my server's JVM, and instantiated in a ColdFusion page.
ColdFusion may not be quite as fast as php, but as far as ease of learning/use, development time, and the power and extensibility of Java, you really can't beat it. I have programmed in php, asp, and asp.net, and ColdFusion is by far my favorite.