Rest Catches On: Oldsters Take Note

In a previous entry, I mentioned that I am working on a personal project that uses REST style urls and microformats to server data to my web application from Cherrypy. Since then, I have noticed that REST is becoming the flavour of the month. We love new things, don’t we?

I have also discovered that the Ruby on Rails people have been getting excited about REST as well. And, there is also a new Java project that I found out about: the Restlet project. I have not noticed as much discussion coming from the PHP camp about REST, but I may simply be missing it.

REST is a style, or a way of constructing URLS, but it is not a technology. I write this for older developers, like me: take note of REST. For a while, everything new seemed to be an MVC framework. Even PHP has CakePHP, an MVC based framework. Everything was trying to compete with Ruby on Rails. That trend is now entrenched. Even the next version of Joomla will be based on the MVC pattern.

Choosing to write code for a living will expose you to never-ending change. What was hot yesterday, will not be tomorrow. In fact, what was hot yesterday is often violently discarded. The older you get, the more you want to keep doing what works. You become good at what you do, and it seems like an insult that younger developers are not interested in learning what you know.

I am here to say to older developers that you DO have knowledge that can benefit young up-and-comers, but you are going to have to understand the new things to ensure that you have credibility. It is a characteristic of the young to dismiss an older developer the moment he or she is not familiar with something new, like Ruby on Rails, for instance. It has always been so. We owe it to the younger generation to try to keep up, especially if being conversant with new things makes it easier for us to share our real wisdom and experience.

So, oldsters, take nore of REST. Besides, learning can be fun.