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SOAP, REST, Big Data, microservices - it's funny how, at the time, everyone seems to be unbelievably vociferous that <technology_of_the_moment> is the only way

SOAP, REST, Big Data, microservices - it's funny how, at the time, everyone seems to be unbelievably vociferous that <technology_of_the_moment> is the only way to do things and that we should all be thankful that the great magnet in the sky gave us this sacred cow. Then, 5 years later, it's obviously the worst thing ever next to the <new_hotness>. <new_hotness> always being unevenly in some ways worse and in others better. We need to, in our exuberance, ask ourselves: what are the current false Gods? Are we technologists that reason or a headless flock?

brylie 5y ago
AWS Lambda?
rswail 5y ago
REST was never about "technology", it's about an architectural style that is particularly suited to a networked separation of API consumers and producers. SOAP was an overengineered set of "standards" that had enough wiggle room that none of the SOAP implementation would interoperate correctly. "microservices" are just "services". The technology that allows them, also allows for horizontal scaling, especially if you ensure that your API is stateless (not the resources, by definition, they have state, that's what you're "transferring"). I've been doing this stuff for 30 years now, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. IMNSHO, the current false Gods are all the "cloud" items. The infrastructure stuff in AWS/GCP/Azure is just... networking and servers with APIs on top. There's nothing particularly special, except that the APIs let you avoid thinking about the underlying infrastructure. As the cloud climbs the software stack, from IaaS, to PaaS (eg RDS), to SaaS (eg Stripe), it's interesting that the APIs remain primarily HTTP/JSON (or XML) and "RESTful" for the most part.
DeathArrow 5y ago
People would use what is trendy because they think doing so it's safer, brings them more jobs and has support.

brylie 5y ago

AWS Lambda?

rswail 5y ago

REST was never about "technology", it's about an architectural style that is particularly suited to a networked separation of API consumers and producers. SOAP was an overengineered set of "standards" that had enough wiggle room that none of the SOAP implementation would interoperate correctly. "microservices" are just "services". The technology that allows them, also allows for horizontal scaling, especially if you ensure that your API is stateless (not the resources, by definition, they have state, that's what you're "transferring"). I've been doing this stuff for 30 years now, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. IMNSHO, the current false Gods are all the "cloud" items. The infrastructure stuff in AWS/GCP/Azure is just... networking and servers with APIs on top. There's nothing particularly special, except that the APIs let you avoid thinking about the underlying infrastructure. As the cloud climbs the software stack, from IaaS, to PaaS (eg RDS), to SaaS (eg Stripe), it's interesting that the APIs remain primarily HTTP/JSON (or XML) and "RESTful" for the most part.

DeathArrow 5y ago

People would use what is trendy because they think doing so it's safer, brings them more jobs and has support.