REST may be the applicable acronym for the server side (or at least, one design for implementing what you describe). But I haven't heard any design patterns with a catchy acronym for what all the cool kids are doing in the browser with Javascript. Perhaps that's for the best. Often a catchy acronym is a sign that a technology will soon either stagnate or be considered passe.
It really depends on the application. Remember, the client is always untrustworthy. You can trust them with their data, but nothing else. In three-legged cases, like an ad or some other third-party developed app hosted in your page, you can't even trust the client-side to have unlimited access to the client's data! Plus, there are remote script hacks that potentially will compromise the user's state or other information.
a catchy acronym for what all the cool kids are doing in the browser with Javascript
At Yahoo, we call it Progressive Layered Enhancement. Start with working markup and server-side logic, and then enhance it in layers to add functionality for the browsers that can handle it, so that it always works, even if a layer is missing or broken.
Having worked on a Microsoft stack in the past, I can say that it was nice to have a single language from end to end. It just really sucked that the language was VisualBasic. So, I get the excitement behind GWT and Pyjamas. Not that the author is wrong, I just think he doesn't really treat the material very well.
PLE! We have our catchy acronym :).
Good point about the security implications. That must be an integral part of any web application design methodology. For traditional kinds of desktop applications, that wasn't so much of a concern.
In my day job, we have a Java back end with a lot of user interaction implemented with Javascript in the browser. Data access server side stuff actually plays to a lot of Java's strengths, I think, and the more dynamic nature of Javascript is a good fit for DOM manipulation in the browser. I'm not sure I would want to pick one of them to run both places.
cool. very few people do! and don't forget rubyjs / rwt.
"Not that the author is wrong, I just think he doesn't really treat the material very well"
well, you can't have everything :)
And that's the real purpose of Prototype, JQuery and friends. To glom over the unholy mess that is cross browser DOM compatibility.
Another question: is MVC still a suitable design pattern for web application development? We have HTML to model structure, CSS to model appearance, and Javascript/DOM to model interaction, and JSON to transfer structured data over the network. This suggests a design where each language plays to its respective strength, instead of trying to find "one language to bind them all."
This suggests a different model than what Xerox PARC had in mind when they came up with MVC for SmallTalk. I'm not sure what that model is, but I believe that the unstated assumption that MVC is a good pattern for web applications needs to be defended.