Writing about REST; An annocodote

So I’ve finally knuckled down after a lot of planning and started writing the book I’ve been meaning to write about RESTFul Web Services. This is still a really interesting topic and I think as things shift to the cloud it will only get more so.

Obviously if you are going to talk about REST you have to talk about Roy Fielding who coined the term REST in his PhD thesis. While I was at ApacheCon this year I had a chance to catch up with Roy. He was a little bit reticent about another person writing a REST book. He has been, understandably, frustrated with the widespread misuse of the term. Following his recent blogging has been insightful, and often amusing. Roy is not prone to pandering to people who don’t take the time to properly understand his work, although he was nice enough to discuss the topic in great detail in the blog comments.

Roy is something of a hero of mine, with his work on URIs, HTTP and his thesis he’s set the scene for a great deal of Web technology. So, time for my anecdote, such as it is. At ApacheCon one of the sponsors had brought some arcade machines including a Star Wars Arcade machine. Throughout the conference people would stop by and hammer out a free few games. I played a bit but never made the high scores table. There was a very good reason for this, the high scores tables started at a million points (way past my ken). The interesting bit though is pretty much every name on the high scores was “Roy”. Looks like Dr Fielding has other talents than network systems architecture.

Back to the book, I’m so glad I’m around so many people that inspire me. Right now I’ve been talking a lot with Seth Fitzsimmons who works at Yahoo’s Brickhouse. There is some awesome stuff Seth’s been working on that will be around soon. It’s really great working with someone who is such a trooper for churning stuff out. I’ve also really enjoyed my occasional discussions with Jeff Lindsay who’s been talking a lot about “web hooks”. I’m not sure I’m convinced yet, but Jeff talks a good game and knows his stuff. It’s definitely good brain food. So look out for some sample chapters soon. If you are interested please email me.