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Comment by dewitt | Hacker News Reader

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dewitt

"And thus spoke someone who has never built a REST API"

Here are Brett's projects: http://www.onebigfluke.com/

Maybe you've heard of some of them? PubSubHubbub, Google App Engine, Camlistore, Google Consumer Surveys.

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I'm sorry, I must have missed the <hyperbole> tags.

Yes, the comment is embellished, but the only place where GET and POST are the only verbs is in a basic web browser. Step outside that world, and the other verbs are in use every day…and intermediary devices - with no knowledge of the business logic of the target server - accommodate those verbs, with proper behavior for the most part. Moving those to the URL means that intermediaries cannot disambiguate the intent.

It wasn't really hyperbole, it was just wrong.

Um, I suggest you look up the definition of the word "Hyperbole". I understand that as a Googler, you wish to defend a fellow Googler, but please differentiate between the arguments of "I disagree with the premise of your argument" and "You're wrong". As a Googler, I'd hope you are reasonably technically literate, and therefore could come up with a rather more refined response than "You're just wrong".

Hyperbole means exaggerating something, usually for emphasis or humor. Even taking your comment as hyperbole, the intended, non-exaggerated meaning still appears to be "this person has insufficient experience to speak on this subject." But the person in question is actually very experienced in this area. Given that, I don't think we can blame James if he didn't understand — it's hard to see what the actual meaning behind the statement could have been.

Yeah, I know what hyperbole means. The problem is your comment was not even in the correct direction. Hyperbole is overstating a truth, not strongly stating something false.

And, this guy is a Googler? Who knew? You know your argument is weak when your best responses are "look it up in a dictionary," and "you work for the same company hur hur."

My point about hyperbole was that it's "an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally". To be fair, I hadn't come across Brett's work before…but anyone writing with degree of detail about HTTP headers, referencing SPACEJUMP and PubSubHubbub has probably used curl -I and may well have worked with a REST API. My point is that the argument - we only use GET and POST - only holds water if we're talking about browsers. although I do see how people could interpret the comment differently, and we all know duty calls: http://xkcd.com/386

"The guy build appengine" isn't a convincing argument either. This is a personal blog, not a peer reviewed journal. Sometimes even distinguished people throw out 270 words without thinking too much about it.

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