I was thinking the other day, all of the Ajax books are selling like hot cakes right now, moreso than the generic JavaScript books. This seems to me to indicate that there is a general misunderstanding about the relationship between JavaScript and Ajax. Given that, I’m wondering how long the buzzword Ajax will continue to sell books and headline conferences. My initial guess: another 12 to 18 months, max.

I’m sure you all remember the hype around web services that gripped the world about 18 months ago. Everything was about web services, and how they would change the software industry. In reality, it was a nice addition, but didn’t change a whole lot. Nevertheless, countless articles and books were sold on the topic. I believe that Ajax will go the same way, and eventually be re-enveloped into JavaScript, becoming a technique for using it instead of a breakthrough application architecture (which it seems to be touted as more and more).