[smadge]

I don't think client side scripting is always innapropriate. I just think it often is. For example, I've seen a lot of pages that just display some copy marketing a product that won't display properly without JavaScript. On the other hand, complex sites like github work fine without JavaScript.

I totally agree, if you are thinking about maintaining user state on the server, you are probably doing it wrong, as you are violating REST. That's the nice thing about using dumb clients, is it forces you to think about application state changes using hypermedia, instead complex client side logic. I think this leads to clean APIs.