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by halostatue 2784 days ago
I have written HATEOAS APIs (not just “RESTish” APIs). I prefer writing GraphQL APIs by far.

If I have to write something that’s REST-ish, I’ll do my damnedest to make sure it’s HATEOAS, but in my experience, the number of developers who can consistently produce useful and consistent HATEOAS APIs is…vanishingly small.

I can learn more about an API from its GraphQL schema than most of the other API documentation (like OAS/Swagger or RAML) out there.

2 comments

>the number of developers who can consistently produce useful and consistent HATEOAS APIs is…vanishingly small.

Because relatively few developers truly understand HATEOAS let alone REST. I think that did play a small part in the increased popularity of GraphQL.

Yeah, if you are writing HATEOAS APIs just by personal preference then you are using the wrong technology. You should write HATEOAS to make sure your API will be consistent, standard and automatically browsable on the long term.