[lucideer]

That link is a great representation of why the term "REST" is so often misused; the author's language is opaque and he makes no attempt to make his thesis accessible to readers. He speaks entirely in abstractions and generalities; nothing is grounded in familiar terminology.

The very first comment from that post asks what he means by "hypertext", a fairly fundamental prerequisite for following his thesis. He replies with the following:

> Hypertext has many definitions

> When I say hypertext, I mean the simultaneous presentation of information and controls such that the information becomes the affordance through which the user (or automaton) obtains choices and selects actions

I challenge anyone to transform something as simple as "hypertext is text with links to other text in it" into a more convoluted and unnecessarily abstracted definition as the above.

[madhadron]

> the simultaneous presentation of information and controls such that the information becomes the affordance through which the user (or automaton) obtains choices and selects actions

What's unclear or abstract about that? To choose an action, the agent must know what actions are available and how to call them. Whatever presents that information to the agent is the affordance. Fielding says that in hyptertext, you get that as part of the actual content as opposed to via documentation or some other channel.

> I challenge anyone to transform something as simple as "hypertext is text with links to other text in it" into a more convoluted and unnecessarily abstracted definition as the above.

Because that's not what it is, in general. See Xanadu for an example of vastly more general kinds of linkages than references.

[lucideer]

> Because that's not what it is, in general. See Xanadu for an example of vastly more general kinds of linkages than references.

The purpose of very abstract, generalised, academic (also legal) language is to attempt to achieve perfect technical correctness in description. Unfortunately this usually comes at the cost of understanding.

"Text with links to other text" obviously won't include 100.000% of applications conforming to RESTfulness, but it does describe what RESTfulness intends far better and more accessibly than a convoluted explanation, which very effectively serves the purpose of informing people calling RPC REST that it is not in fact REST (for example). It also gives a broad audience a general direction to work toward if they intend to use REST (or a reasonable argument not to use it if it's not what they feel they need).

The accessible explanation serves an actual practical purpose, the pedantic explanation has no actual benefit. The fact that you had to reference a project as esoteric and dead-end as Xanadu is testament to this.

[SilasX]

>What's unclear or abstract about that? To choose an action, the agent must know what actions are available and how to call them. Whatever presents that information to the agent is the affordance. Fielding says that in hyptertext, you get that as part of the actual content as opposed to via documentation or some other channel.

But then that would be wrong. You had to know, through documentation and other out-of-band education, what you’re supposed to do with these `<a href=...` things. Ditto for any of the other options a page might present.

When you first used the web, you didn’t know what href meant. You had to read some instructions, or depend on UX designers’ decision to graphically represent a-tags in a way that suggests clickability and followability. That’s already outside his REST model.

Fielding is not being clear on how REST’s assumptions about “what you already know out-of-band” differ from other models.

[naasking]

> I challenge anyone to transform something as simple as "hypertext is text with links to other text in it" into a more convoluted and unnecessarily abstracted definition as the above.

Except text+links does not encompass the full meaning of hypertext. Forms and inputs are also possible, for instance. The more general definition you cite encompasses all of this (information+controls), and more possible innovations than your very specific definition which lists only the current ways.

[bartread]

That was my exact thought process. No examples, familiar terminology, or simple language: just architectural astronautery par excellence.

I always find myself sceptical of people who appear to hold an almost religious level of belief about some programming construct or protocol and yet are unable to express themselves plainly. It comes off like a developer-ish version of business speak and isn't generally useful for moving a discussion forward or solving any problems.

[sanderjd]

He's just an academic, using academic language.

[jaequery]

some people just love to write with as much big words as possible. i hope they try challenge themselves in the opposite, to use as much common words as possible and see what comes out of them.

[pfortuny]

It is because he seems to be thinking of hypertext as html (i.e. he is mixing the concept “hypertext” with the language “html” used to realize the concept (and much more)).

[vfc1]

Unfortunately, that is typical of academic texts, where that embellishment is expected, if not almost mandatory for the whole thing to be approved by the jury.

[lucideer]

While it's certainly true of quite a few academic texts, I've read quite a lot for which it's not the case. I don't think it's mandatory, particularly for jury approval, rather just a quirk of many academic individuals.

Moreover, this is blog post and comments on a blog post: academic juries aren't the intended audience.