Comment by AdieuToLogic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AdieuToLogic | Hacker News Reader

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  REST is one of the worst tech religions
  ever created yielding the most blinkered
  zealots... Any alternative technology ...
  is considered an evil intrusion invalidating
  the purity of REST and must be vanquished.

What a reasoned, sound, rational discourse. Good thing zealotry should be shat upon.

  No we must develop and shoe-horn all
  App and User experiences within the
  constraints of an ambiguous thesis that
  was built to link and update documents
  and create server-driven turn-by-turn
  apps.

Wow. Pretty harsh, considering that the author of said "ambiguous thesis" is also one of the handful of people responsible for defining the very infrastructure which makes your diatribe possible to disseminate. Along with some guys named Tim[1] and Henrik[2].

Perhaps, instead of using this "shoe-horn-mandatin', ambiguous thesis thinkin', can't-force-their-ideas-on-everyone" HTTP "religion", you'd prefer whatever Facebook tells you is better?

Oh, and ya might want to do that with something that doesn't use HTTP.

Coz if you did, then u r p0wned by teh man.

1 - http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

2 - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1945.txt

> Wow. Pretty harsh, considering that the author of said "ambiguous thesis" is also one of the handful of people responsible for defining the very infrastructure which makes your diatribe possible to disseminate.

Actually no, TCP/IP/DNS is the backbone of the Internet and what made the Internet possible, HTTP was invented before Roy dropped his thesis. People like to give Roy kudos for inventing the Internet which re-inforces the "Bible" concept REST-afarins like to re-enforce as their blindly ignoring any other superior technology that's not deeply rooted in a REST philosophy.

Here's a quote from Alan Kay on the Internet as it was invented in 1969 - which handle billions of nodes that has never been stopped after it was turned on and had all its atoms replaced:

> The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free?

Take note the lack of any mention of REST. This is what he has to say about the tacked on "Web" you're attributing to the Internet:

> The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.

The thing that makes the Internet possible is its infrastructure, the thing that makes the web platform powerful is modern web browsers - i.e. the things that only the largest tech companies spending decades of developer effort and investing 100's of millions can do to maintain a competitive browser. Which Despite its primary focus and decade-long head-start it's still getting eaten by Native Mobile Apps and not because they better at adhering to the constraints of REST, quite contraire, they're not grounded into the turn-by-turn per-request model and just focus on providing the best end-user experience they can using the most suitable technology for each task.

HTTP is a conduit sitting in the middle, adding unnecessary overhead on each request that's great for linking documents and composing static content sites but is poorly optimized for Responsive or Interactive Web Apps.

> you'd prefer whatever Facebook tells you is better?

No people should learn to think for themselves and use their experience to pick the best tool for the job, not blindly follow mindless preachers who can only think in REST ignoring anything superior that can deliver end-users a better experience - i.e. who Technology should be serving, not the other way round.

  Actually no, TCP/IP/DNS is the backbone
  of the Internet and what made the Internet
  possible, HTTP was invented before Roy
  dropped his thesis. People like to give Roy
  kudos for inventing the Internet ...

Hi strawman[1], nice to see you again. I specifically stated that Fielding, Berners-Lee, and Frystyk were responsible for defining HTTP. A fact well documented by the aforementioned RFC-1945 reference. Since your reply was submitted by some form of HTTP client (a.k.a. "web browser"), by definition it used said protocol or the derivative "HTTPS" protocol to do so.

This is further supported by you acknowledging the same:

  ... the thing that makes the web platform
  powerful is modern web browsers ...

You see, these "modern web browsers" support a thing called "HTTP." And this "HTTP" thingie was defined by a handful of people (this sounds familiar).

Regarding web client performance verses native apps, you state:

  Which Despite its primary focus and
  decade-long head-start it's still getting
  eaten by Native Mobile Apps ...

This largely can be explained by bloated JavaScript-based SPA's[2] downloading megabytes of interpreted code. Want faster performing interaction? Don't stuff dozens of script references into a page which mandates the system to download them before being useful.

How could this be done? One is called Code-on-Demand[3]. But for this to be viable, the system must recognize the server as being a first-class concern which collaborates with its clients instead of being a glorified data base connection pool. But if a person is myopically focused on what executes solely in the browser, this might elude them.

  >  you'd prefer whatever Facebook tells
  you is better?

  No people should learn to think for
  themselves and use their experience to
  pick the best tool for the job ...

Here's a point we agree upon. Nice to end it on a high note.

1 - http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/think/strawman.htm

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application

3 - http://restcookbook.com/Basics/codeondemand/

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