Dev know-it-alls and AJAX

It happens every time. Someone mentions AJAX on some newsgroup of forum somewhere, and some know-it-all developer will come out and say "This is nothing new. I've been doing this for years. You are all stupid." Bleh.

While I do agree that AJAX isn't exactly new, Jesse James Garrett did a powerful thing when he coined that term: he put a handle on an abstract idea. Computer scientists need to do this type of thing all the time. The Gang of Four weren't inventing anything when they wrote about the Decorator pattern, but giving it a name made it easy for people to use and discuss it.

If you think about it, the term "AJAX Application" makes absolutely no sense. Really, what is an "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML Application"? Is it an application that helps you write tools that use Asynchronous JavaScript And XML? No! The term has matured beyond an acronym and is now used mostly to describe hybrid client web applications. ( I know I've heard people say "Google Maps is an AJAX web application". ) For better or worse, that is how the term is being used now. I believe that language evolves, and with that is makes sense that words can also evolve to mean different things.

Perhaps I should say "Google Maps is an Ajax web application."

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