design over matter

I've been pondering this question due to a project I built with ColdFusion 8 AJAX.  If you've ever attended an Adobe Roadshow event you've seen the showmanship in action.  Exciting demos that let you build entire apps with the click of a button or new tags that add complex functionality with very little effort.  I don't have a problem with these demos, it's the missing  "warning label" that I'm concerned with.

ColdFusion 8 introduced AJAX functionality to the language.  I took the opportunity to build an application for a client using all these great new tags, and sometimes using multiple tags together.  CFLayout for tabs with CFGrids inside my tabs, etc.  I ran into a few glitches along the way but with the help of the community I got my project off the ground.

ColdFusion 9 was released last year and I thought it was worth the upgrade.  To my dismay I found many of the AJAX tags broke in ColdFusion 9.  Several hours of tweaking got the project running on my local machine.

This brings me to the point of this post.  What is Adobe's obligation to backwards compatibility of these AJAX tags?  I know they are built with open source libraries, but is that an excuse?  Saying the AJAX libraries are great for rapid prototyping but don't use them in a production environment is an option, but that is never mentioned during the roadshows or by Adobe.  What is the future of these AJAX tags?