It's more work to write a client library for XML-RPC/SOAP, but a single one of those libraries is likely to work with any such service you encounter. Most users

It's more work to write a client library for XML-RPC/SOAP, but a single one of those libraries is likely to work with any such service you encounter. Most users never have to write one themselves. On the other hand, it's easy to write an HTTP "REST" client library. But it seems that everyone has a different idea of what REST is. Amazon's implementation of REST isn't even close to the generally-accepted definition, for instance. Indeed, you need (to write) a separate client module for every service you use, and that's where REST fails. Because it's so easy to write a REST service, it seems more like REST is an excuse for lazy server writers to get by.