[uf-rest] Interface(s) first, implementation second?

David Heinemeier Hansson david at loudthinking.com
Tue Nov 15 12:38:48 PST 2005


>  Shouldn't we first __agree on URI structure and XML formats__ to  
> transmit
>  and then discuss how it is implemented in Ruby, Python, Java, ...

I don't believe in trying to pick the abstraction before the  
implementation. We need to get a feel for what works by actually  
doing it. Just by looking at the URL scheme that Donald proposed, I  
would probably have nodded my head and thought: Great! Actually  
trying to implement it made me realize some of the issues.

>  Sidenote: We have still XSLT on our tool stack to do some work, so we
>  could e.g. return plain xml but with an XSLT attached to render as
>  XHTML which in turn is formatted via CSS.

I definitely don't want to step on any one's toes, but my personal  
preference is that XSLT is the spawn of evil :). My brain is simply  
incompatible with XSLT and I can't imagine working on any stack that  
includes that. But that's of course just me. We might well have  
different flavors of doing things where one of them includes XSLT.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson
http://www.37signals.com    -- Basecamp, Backpack, Writeboard, Tada
http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.rubyonrails.com  -- Web-application framework




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