Religious, unproductive and useless contract-first vs code-first discussions again

Note: this entry has moved.

Every now and then, an article revives that old debate on whether to code web services starting from XSD/WSDL or starting from classes that generate the former. Answers from one side or the other  fail to realize the truth: there's no black and white in the real world. Amen Craig!

Just for the record: I agree with Craig in that you cannot do one without the other. Which way you start, is a matter of timing, which won't save you from learning both technologies. And I would even argue that learning how to properly understand and use the host of XML serialization attributes to get what you want on the wire is almost on a pair with learning XSD (except for the esoteric features like substitution groups that you don't even need to learn as they are not even supported by XmlSerializer).