In a moment where it seems impossibile to get online without actually reading tons of blog posts or articles about Web 2.0, it’s nice to read some original point of view about the actual AJAX impact over industry and innovation (if any), considering the architectural implications and debating about which road should we go.
“Web 2.0 marks the dictatorship of the presentation layer, a triumph of appearance over architecture that any good computer scientist should immediately dismiss as unsustainable.”
In this post @ deal architect Vinnie Mirchandani deals with Bill Thompson‘s article @ regdeveloper.co.uk, where the Web 2.0 “madness” is harshly criticized (with a bunch of – IMHO – nice politically-motivated metaphores 
).
To be honest, I subscribe to this point of view: first of all I can’t quite understand where this enthusiasm about a late-1990 web development technique comes from; XmlHTTPRequest has been there since much earlier, it’s not rocket science, nor cuttin’ edge technology.
Furthermore, I definitely agree with Thompson’s invitation not to focus ourselves that much about the presentation layer: the way we present data is absolutely important, but the actual innovation is elsewhere to be chased. Engineering should face (and its actually facing) much more complicated challenges than asynchronous <div> refreshing.
Whatever, I believe there’s no chance to get a better conclusion for this post than Thompson’s one, so I’ll steal his one:
“The time has come to stand up and be counted, and we need people who can count in hex and see beyond the Web 2.0 hype. “
