Even a chimp can write code

Sunday, May 22, 2005

AJAX: old wine in an old bottle

The developer blogosphere is ablaze these days with all manner of hand waving and devotional pandering to AJAX. Some two-bit consulting firm (I won't honor them with a name or a hyperlink) had a idea: how about we give a new name to a bunch of tried and tested web technologies? Brilliant! Hence [sound the bugles and let it rain confetti] AJAX. Apparently it is short for Asynchronous Javascript and XMLHttpRequest or something similar. The rest of us morons have been referring to it as DHTML all along.

Ever since Microsoft pioneered XMLHttpRequest, people have been using it in their web applications; Outlook Web Access, for example.

It is one thing for slime ball consultants to sell an old-wine-in-an-old-bottle-with-a-new-label to buzzword compliant CIOs and IT managers, willing to jump on bandwagons and be taken for a ride. But for web influentials to take this absurd idea and run with it, is simply alarming. To quote Mugatu, doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

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