CFWheels uses RoR MVC concepts, so separation from data/logic/display as you'd expect. This (major) second version has it's own built in test suite for TDD, RESTful routing etc, and the whole core has been written in CFScript which is "tag free". My point being that any modern CFML web app can easily engage with best practice development - that's of course not to say there aren't a lot of legacy apps out there as you rightly mention.