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RE: SOAP and the Web

• To: "'xml-dev'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: SOAP and the Web
• From: "Andrew Dubinsky" <andy@e...>
• Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 11:45:05 -0500
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <2C61CCE8A870D211A523080009B94E430752B3CB@HQ5>

>Econ 101 was wrong.  The customer simply wanted what Betamax 
>was not going to provide for a few more years.  Those years 
>made all the difference.   Remediation has arrived in the 
>form of a DVD.

VHS was cheaper to manufacture due to less stringent audio and video
requirements (2 heads & mono audio). Hence the reason Sony dominated the
professional market with Beta. It took many years for VHS to deliver
comparable performance in audio and video with 4 head & Hi-Fi VHS units.

4/6/8 hour tape length did not arrive until about two years later when
EP (extended play) and later SP (super extended play) picture
compression was developed (I think by JVC).

Price and availability were the dominant factors. Sony did not have
channels into many retailers as Samsung, RCA, Hitachi, Panasonic,
Pioneer, Mitsubishi, and JVC did. The market divided along the same (or
similar) brand lines as you see today. Samsung/Hitachi/RCA on the low
end, and Mitsubishi/JVC on the high end, Panasonic and Pioneer target
the middle...


>As far as I can tell, all the major tool vendors also support 
>the REST architecture.  What the pushback is is that for the 
>programmer, it is harder to code REST.  Again, REST requires 
>discipline and SOAP requires a toolkit.  Given that, SOAP 
>will win because the payoffs start immediately and REST is 
>sort of a deferred gratification based on predictable interfaces. 

Harder to code almost always means lower uptake. Look at the success of
Visual Basic, possibly one of the all-time worst things to happen to an
otherwise pitiful language. One could also argue that Perl is the
ultimate write-only language as well, proving that easy-to-code scores
more points with developers than style, elegance, or maintainability. 

Sadly, too many projects get done under the motto: "I don't care if it's
unmaintainable crap, our competitor just went into beta. Get it done."

Sincerely,
Andrew

• References:
  • RE: SOAP and the Web
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>

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