Chris Heschong: The real reason to forget about REST is: native types. I don't want to have to read documentation, figure out a format, and then write a function to parse every separate web service individually. I want to *call* a function and get my results as an array, damnit.

I've wanted to get this off my chest for a while.  I get a steady stream of traffic from Paul Prescod's article where he says Implementors have enough of a problem just getting SOAP toolkits to talk to each other.  In other words, he is ridiculing SOAP for trying to solve a difficult and real problem.

[Sam Ruby]

Here's another reason to forget about REST: REST is fundamentally bound to HTTP, and SOAP is not.

1:54:22 PM  comment ()       

"Wow. Its just amazing how quickly a real community can get something done when they think its important. What I'm referring to is my proposal for a fairly stupid distributed OPML renderer in PHP."

This is great!  I just added a "view this outline" link in my left column.  The previous solution (thanks to Roger Cadenhead) was very nice, especially its interactive quality, but was limited to IE6.  Kudos to Scott Johnson and the impromptu FuzzyStuff team. 

10:06:22 AM  comment ()       

"Yes, you could do it with REST. You don't even need XML, but since that's what's happening, go with the flow, let's make new apps, and let's enjoy this moment, instead of looking back and talking about how it could have been done."

Dave, thanks for articulating this, and especially for saying it in a non-confrontational way.  I've been reading Paul Prescod's comments, and he argues well, but I'm not persuaded by arguments for purity when "non-pure" solutions are widely available, well accepted, and entirely functional.

9:51:41 AM  comment ()