API, REST, SOAP, XML-RPC, WTF?!?!

[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
Thanks for joining the party guys, but I still feel left in the dark.

I don't understand what all these acronyms MEAN. Should I just not worry about it and create a controller that receives post variables and a response to the page? Then sites that rely on the API could just cURL some post data to the controller and scrape the response. Does that make sense? If so, what type of API is that?

Sorry for being extremely noobish, but there's only one way to get out of noob status - and that's bootcamp. Since I don't really want to go to bootcamp, I choose to eternally ask stupid questions. Thanks again.