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Comment by dansingerman | Hacker News Reader

Web development has long since moved on past WSDL and SOAP; they've now been relegated to the domain of Enterprise software.

As for the claim that the proliferation of frameworks indicates a problem, well I completely disagree. They are so many frameworks because progress is being made improving the technology all the time. This is a good thing; it is how progress is made. By your logic there is a problem with the automotive industry (people keep making new cars), the computer hardware industry (new chips), in fact pretty much every industry that exists today.

It's human (hacker?) nature to think there must be a better way, and do something about it.

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Enterprise software is where much of the industry is employed. SOAP is becoming more prevalent, not less.

This is a thread about web development though.

Can enterprise software not be web-based?

Yes it can. In fact if the article was about how enterprise web development using SOAP and XML was broken I'd be fully supportive of it, given how web development has matured past that to leaner, more suitable technologies (REST/JSON)

But that's really a different conversation.

You must be using "web development" in a way that I have never encountered before.

> Enterprise software is where much of the industry is employed. > SOAP is becoming more prevalent, not less.

[ citation needed ]

If you find the first statement controversial then I suggest stepping outside of the world of HN once in a while.

As to the second claim, SOAP is very popular with Java and .Net developers, especially when they have taken up the latest fad, SOA. There are also entire industries, such as healthcare, that are heavily pushing SOAP-based standards for data exchange.

SOAP seems to have its niches, but I live in the enterprise world myself and even those using SOA seem to be moving away from SOAP when they can.

And when it comes to medical systems, most of the time JSON wouldn't be enough anyway.

I think you're missing the mark if you condemn "Web development" as a whole just because enterprise culture is pathological.

|"By your logic there is a problem with the automotive industry (people keep making new cars)"

But you don't see infinite procedures to make the same car. Web frameworks aren't solving new problems. They are competing with other frameworks which does the exact same thing.

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