XmlHttpRequest (XHR) is back baby! Actually it never went away but its been pretty cool to see a bunch of mentions recently. Most prominently in the amazing podcast Acquired in their Google (er Alphabet) episode. One of the things I love about the Acquired guys is they really talk to the right people to get their info mostly right. If you have been inside a big company and seen the press report on something you know directly about you quickly realize they are lucky to get it 50% right, and 20% is more common. Anytime I find someone reporting on things from the outside that routinely gets it 80%+ right about things I know directly about I'm very impressed. In this case their Microsoft Part 2 episode covered things I know more directly about and they did a very good job. It doesn't hurt that I know a bunch of the people they talked to and they did get a bunch of the key folks to explain things.

Anyway, coming up on about 28 years later and while its changed a bunch and been supplemented by other important techniques (websockets for one important example), its still pretty cool the longevity of this simple but crucial important. I only have to open the F12 developer tools to look at this site (or just about any other one) and see it still doing its thing.