I don’t really remember SOAP since that was over a decade ago, but what I like about REST is that it harmonizes the front end and backend structures of the appl

I don’t really remember SOAP since that was over a decade ago, but what I like about REST is that it harmonizes the front end and backend structures of the application and it makes things predictable. It also puts up some guardrails against obviously dumb behaviour like deleting records via a GET and with JSON API, makes it possible for things to snap together once you’ve got the structure right. Ember Data + Rails set up to follow JSON API is just unbelievably productive. Pagination, filtering, optionally including other resources, linking (both to the related resource itself and to the relationship itself) it’s really fast, consistent, powerful, flexible, and secure. It’s not always performant, but when performance is important I make one little RCP or nonstandard REST endpoint (say return a link to a big TSV blob) and I move on with life.