[rasteau]

>HTTP was initially designed for transfering static files and static data over potentially unauthenticated connections.

It may be more useful to view "transfering static files and static data over potentially unauthenticated connections" as the first application of HTTP. While there are parts of HTTP that are useful for static data transfer (e.g., Cache-Control), there are parts of HTTP that would have no relevance if that were the only use case (e.g., 409 Conflict).

>it's not suitable for handling complex dynamic data

I would agree that HTTP was not designed to support applications pushing data from server to client, but that is a communication directionality issue separate from the issue of whether the data itself is complex or dynamic.