Earlier this month Matt posted a provocative article on rich internet applications. Here’s a taster:

Ajax is a dangerous and immature technology. It is, in fact, a hack—a kludget—to provide rich-client functionality in the browser.

And here’s my equally blistering riposte.

Hear that sound? It’s the CEO of Oddpost, which was one of the first Ajax apps, and which sold for a reported US$30 million to Yahoo. He’s crying himself to sleep ’cause Matt said his technology sucked. My point is not (just) to lampoon Matt, but to point that Ajax does work, and is worth a lot of cabbages. Clearly a lot of people are using it so it can’t be that hard.

Matt says “Ajax (as currently exemplified by Javascript and XML over HTTP) is certainly only version 0.5”. Now I don’t think that is entirely fair. There a many toolkits and libraries that make developing Ajax applications easier and more robust. Debugging support isn’t so bad either. As for type checking…well I’m giving that one to Matt. At least for now.

So in conclusion I argue that’s Matt case is not proved. In your face Matt! Tune in next time when we kiss and make up. Or Matt gives me a black eye.