Right, there's a great many blog posts that can be TL;DRed as "We implemented REST wrong, and it didn't work. I guess REST is overrated." There's two major com

Right, there's a great many blog posts that can be TL;DRed as "We implemented REST wrong, and it didn't work. I guess REST is overrated." There's two major components that makes an API truly REST, as opposed to the XML-RPC and SOAP-style APIs that were popular in the early 2000s: Proper use of the HTTP verbs, and the use of Hypermedia. Most so-called RESTful APIs have adopted the verbs part of it successfully and correctly, but the vast majority have completely whiffed on hypermedia. Your HTTP API is a state machine whether you like it or not. Hypermedia gives you a means to describe the state transitions as a part of your API. Without it, you are essentially requiring each of your API consumers to re-implement the state transitions for themselves. (The aggravating part of that, however, is that there's not too many good hypermedia-based client libraries, because it seems that most of the proponents would prefer to navel-gaze in their ivory towers, thinking about RFCs and getting the standards perfect. But I digress.) I wrote a blog post a few months back that goes into more detail about the advantages conferred by a true Hypermedia API: http://blog.theamazingrando.com/in-band-vs-out-of-band.html http://blog.theamazingrando.com/in-band-vs-out-of-band.html