>it has become very clear to me everyone has a different interpretation of what REST can or should be This is very true, the term has been abused so much that

>it has become very clear to me everyone has a different interpretation of what REST can or should be This is very true, the term has been abused so much that it has no relation to its original meaning. We can loosely define REST by one of its key qualities: hypermedia, that is a lot easier to say than HATEOAS. By focusing on this distinction, it rules out 99% of APIs in the wild. On top of that, hypermedia media types and linked data are important for an API to be self-documenting, so there is a rather high bar for developers to implement.