Steve Vinoski summed it up so well almost 10 years ago that I haven’t felt the need to discuss it.
IEEE Internet Computing: July/August 2008, Convenience Over Correctness (pdf)
The RPC topic in general came up recently here.
For historical perspective - the initial paper:
Birrell, A.D and Nelson, B. J., “Implementing Remote Procedure Calls” Feb. 1984 (pdf)
and a major critique:
Tanenbaum, A.S. and van Renesse, R., “A Critique of the Remote Procedure Call Paradigm” - 1988 (pdf)
… and one blogger’s contemporary musings (twitter) about the two.
