I've spent many months over the past few years trying to really understand REST in order to design a good API and it never quite sat right - there was always so

I've spent many months over the past few years trying to really understand REST in order to design a good API and it never quite sat right - there was always something that seemed like a hack. I'm not going to pick through the OP post, except this line: "a REST endpoint can return whatever you want" Yep. I know this and have done that: an endpoint to return complex data. And it never felt right - either I make a bunch of special endpoints losing all of the nice consistency of REST, or I have endpoints that return too much or too little. Or I have a highly parameterized endpoint that essentially lets me pass it a query (cough like GraphQL!) At the start of the year, I was thinking about how I would like to write my applications client and what I (conceptually, I never got to implement it) came up with was rather similar in concept to Relay/GraphQL in that UI components declaratively state what data they are interested in and the system keeps it in sync by querying the server similar to how Relay/GraphQL do. I personally find that model much nicer than REST. But... as a consumer of third-party API's, I do love REST and worry about what a shift might do. However, from a SPA application development point of view, I love the concepts behind Relay and GraphQL more than REST. But hey - I guess I just don't understand REST well enough (actually, I really don't - I'd be the first to admit it!), despite spending a long conscious effort in trying to. Which is the problem: this mythical "proper" REST seems too difficult to understand and use, so everyone kinda just makes up their own flawed flavour and calls it REST.