For starters, it is rather rude to assume how little I know about this.

Leaving that aside, Drew is mis-characterising things a little.

Wayland is fundamentally a different __compositor__ architecture. But the X11 system is about more than that, in fact compositors are a rather late addition to the X11 system.

And the protocol architectures are actually quite similar in shape. Which is not surprising, since good ideas last, and X11 has been around for a long time and has accumulated lots of good things (along with lots of cruft too).

So it would have been quite possible, but a good deal less fun, to do it differently.