[tasubotadas]

> the simplicity of RPC

Simplicity? Have you ever tried to integrate distributed applications that do not share the same codebase?

And calling REST anti-pattern tells me that you aren't that familiar with alternatives.

>despite virtually all of them being RPC APIs with a veneer of rather pointless HTTP semantics.

If you want to do RPC over HTTP and pretend that it is REST interface, it isn't really a problem of REST.