[smt88]

> HTTP is so simple

So is email. The simplicity of a protocol has nothing to do with the complexity of the workflow that produces it.

> why not just write that directly in a literate format you can checkin to a repo?

Because nothing I work on in Postman is something I need to check in to a repo. I need to test HTTP requests, and I've never worked with a code base that had raw HTTP requests in it.

> They're still alternatives, just not in the style you're used to.

The "style" is different enough that entire use cases become impossible.

Let's say I want to copy HTTP response headers out of a log in JSON format. In Postman, I can paste JSON (and various other key-value formats) into the headers field, and it automatically parses it for me.

There are a hundred little conveniences like that that require a good GUI.