There's a footnote in "Programming Ruby" (page 249) which more or less says it all:
SOAP once stood for Simple Object Access Protocol. When folks could no longer stand the irony, the acronym was dropped, and now SOAP is just a name.
"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: Of SOAP and men, aka "It's perfectly simple" they say by Joost
in thread Of SOAP and men, aka "It's perfectly simple" they say by Jenda

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