Oh, no doubt that there were terribly done WSDL mechanisms out there. Probably most of them. However, many of the mature choices now have a fairly reliable "generate a client off of this wsdl" to get a generic api you can hit from your language of choice. I recall using python and such was actually mostly as expected.

Compared with most "RESTful" services, which require me personally figuring out everything and home growing every portion. Heaven help you if someone makes a change breaking something you had already done.