[vfc1]

I don't think anyone cares, really. It's a well established name, people knows what it means a REST-style API. It's not perfect, but nothing is, it's good enough. Let's not change its name, what would be the benefit of it?

It would only cause even more confusion for no good reason.

[Gunax]

I actually really don't think most people know what it means.

Personally, I was on a team of over 10 devs and I am pretty sure none of us knew what REST really meant (including me at the time).

The author is practically correct--RESTful is so misunderstood that even large companies label their APIs as RESTful when they aren't.

[petee]

I concur most don't know what it means. Years ago I started reading around trying to understand it, and all I found was that the ones who supposedly did understand, really couldn't explain it clearly; and they all had different definitions.

Reminds me of "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"

[slver]

> people knows what it means a REST-style API

Oh they know what it means. They just don't agree about it.

It's kinda like politics and sports. Everyone is an expert.

[incrudible]

Nitpickers do care. When they start adding HATEOAS and shoehorning semantics into HTTP verbs to make the API more RESTful, they make everything worse to use.

The problem is that REST is a buzzword, so you want to keep the word somehow, but throw out the nonsense.

[thih9]

> Nitpickers do care. When they start adding HATEOAS and shoehorning semantics into HTTP verbs to make the API more RESTful, they make everything worse to use.

Sounds like bad work organisation or bad priorities are a factor too. These same people could as well make sure some other spec is followed to the letter; e.g. email validation logic from another HN submission [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27263141