You are right, the web is diverging into pages and applications, unfortunately some are using applications technology to deliver pages. Yet others keep trying t

You are right, the web is diverging into pages and applications, unfortunately some are using applications technology to deliver pages. Yet others keep trying to force page development patterns and practices on applications. The progressive enhancements one is the worst of all the sins of page developers writing apps. It kills the model and spikes the complexity. over ever-increasing complexity we call the web browser? Much of the complexity at least from a development standpoint is when people try to sprinkle in Ajax. They are two very distinct development patterns and mixing them creates a maintenance monster. If one is providing pages they are better off, grabbing a CMS and delivering pages, if one is building an app then one is better off throwing away JSP, ASP or PHP and writing all of the UI logic in client side JS that communicates to the server via REST and gets data that the UI is then responsible for displaying. Anything in between those two becomes a maintenance monster.