Steve Jones has written a post entitled “Want to be cool? Learn REST. Want a career? Learn WS”. His argument is that while REST may be cool, it’s not what pays your rent — WS is.
How sad.
I don’t dispute that WS-* is a commercial reality, but if the last argument pro-WS is “we know it sucks, but everybody uses it, so we have to, as well”, the technical debate clearly has been won.
(And no, I don’t believe this is irrelevant — I’ve had this disagreement with Steve in the past: REST vs. WS-* is not an implementation detail.)
Wasn’t “we know it sucks, but everybody uses it” the clincher argument for HTTP+HTML 10-15 years ago? http://shirky.com/writings/evolve.html It definitely was the clincher for XML. http://xmlsucks.org/but_you_have_to_use_it_anyway/
This debate is taking on the tone of the “pure relational model” vs SQL permaflamefest, c.f. the ominously quiet dbdebunk.com website, or http://www.fact-index.com/r/re/relational_model.html. There too, it’s easy to argue that the technical debate was won by the pure relational model 30 years ago, but SQL - and even more impure horrors such as XML c.f. http://www.dbazine.com/ofinterest/oi-articles/pascal11 :-) — rulez in everyone’s Day Job.