the Design Experience Weblog Archive

I had a conversation the other day when another developer mentioned using a REST interface instead of HTTP POST. Despite reading quite a bit about REST, the idea had not sunk in. My colleague explained that the basic idea is that all operations on a "resource" use the same URL. So if you have a file/data structure/whatever you PUT to create it, GET to retreive it, at the same URL. Where, with a POST, in general, the URL stays the same, and the paramters, change to refer to the resource. GET would usually occur at yet another URL, with the same parameters. I'll have to keep thinking about it.

"With the long tail, there's space for everything. The Enterprisey people and the agile folks can all do their own thing. I think Java was the last "big thing" to hit software development - from here on out, there are going to be bunches of small things, all appealing to different niches." James Robertson imagines the future where many tools are used, rather than just a few "enterprise" approved tools. This fits well into how OpenACS and .LRN are going these days. There is no one perfect toolkit to build a web application, but there are definitely applications that can be implemented well with OpenACS or .LRN

Dave Buck demonstrates the power of the Smalltalk IDE. It shows just how close you can get to the code. Even with the testing and automatic code reloading in OpenACS, there isn't anything as interactive as Smalltalk.