You're right and wrong at the same time: - Technically REST and HTTP are two different things, I totally agree with you. - Historically, before REST became po

You're right and wrong at the same time: - Technically REST and HTTP are two different things, I totally agree with you. - Historically, before REST became popular, people where doing complete nonsense on top of HTTP, with no respect of the spec whatsoever (see my comment above). This madness was stopped because of REST ! It's only when REST gained in popularity that people started to learn HTTP, and since then people developed a lot of semantically valid HTTP interface and called them REST API. To sum up my previous points : REST as imagined by Roy Fielding never caught, and the word REST is now almost unanimously used to describe «HTTP-compliant API». May HATEOAS rest in peace :)