Client-Server Partitioning

I have slowly grown to love RESTful web services.

I was asked about a nearly empty section in the code repository labeled "Java client".

"Yes," I said, "it's a place-holder for a Java package that includes classes to wrap our RESTful web services."

"Really?" I was asked, "Why? We use FLEX for the client, not Java Applets."

"Today we use FLEX. In the past, we weren't sure. We have a complete Python client library. Indeed, the original concept was to support our customer's building their own web site to use our web services. The Java package would plug into a J2EE web app. No one wanted that, so we built FLEX clients instead."

Then they said that the super-clean separation between all these clients and the RESTful server was taking "flexibility to a whole new level."

I pointed them to this. EWD340: The Humble Programmer. It has this killer quote:

The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague.

I find that this really helps keep the focus on simplicity. I suppose that it leads to flexibility, but that's not the real point. The real point was simplicity.