>I didn't mean the graybeard in a bad way at all. Oh, no offense taken. What you read in my comment was genuine recognition on my part that I've likely crossed

>I didn't mean the graybeard in a bad way at all. Oh, no offense taken. What you read in my comment was genuine recognition on my part that I've likely crossed over into the graybeard camp--both in experience and disposition. >I feel a bit 50-50 on some of the reactions to JSON as a new thing at the time. Yeah, there have certainly been real improvements in tech that are perfectly reasonable. And, actually, I think it's the incremental improvements that add up over time which actually comprise the bulk of our real progress. I think where things get off track is when we make sudden pronouncements that we must now cease doing everything we've done heretofore with tech Y in favor of new and shiny tech X. Every use case. Period. Whether it's killing XML because, JSON or killing SQL because, NoSQL or adopting J2EE for every "enterprise" app, or never writing Vanilla JS again because, Framework Fill-in-The-Blank; the list goes on. There's just a tendency in the tech community to lurch in different directions with this extreme vigor. But, when you really think about it, once the foundations are laid there just aren't many quantum leaps that truly merit such strong reactions. And, what's really strange is that we somehow manage to overlook glaring weaknesses in the new tech, and likewise disregard (or even impugn) the strengths of the tech we're displacing in ways that are obviously unfavorable. For instance, suddenly deciding we don't need ACID transactions. What? You see that stuff and it's an automatic, "yeah, this will all blow over soon". We then generally a.) forget it ever happened or b.) settle into assigning the proper use-cases, adopting/integrating the best properties of the tech, and moving on. Incremental.