[ahallock]

Exactly. And this is what clients can provide over generic, one-size-fits-all solutions: fluent, idiomatic, and terse access to APIs.

[autarch]

Here's another way to phrase it. A good API is based on the data and actions related to a specific domain of knowledge. Generic solutions produce APIs that are oriented around the communications protocol (REST).

On the client side, I don't really care (too much) if something is a POST or PUT, I want to send a message or update a repository's metadata or share a photo.