We agree that ad-hoc RPC mechanisms are inappropriate. REST is not a RPC mechanism - people wrongly “using it” as one does not change what REST is, simply beca

We agree that ad-hoc RPC mechanisms are inappropriate. REST is not a RPC mechanism - people wrongly “using it” as one does not change what REST is, simply because there is a wealth of academic and industrial knowledge that uses REST in a specific way. This way is formally defined, and retroactively changing the meaning offers no immediate advantage. Again: when a statement “REST is worse than RPC” is evaluated, it implies to people (who are already obviously confused) that REST is worse than RPC. When people look at what REST is (i.e. Fielding’s thesis) they are further confused, because what Fielding describes obviously isn’t designed to compete with RPC. RPC existed when Fielding was writing his thesis and developing HTTP. He wasn’t solving the same problem. The best thing to do is to instruct what REST actually is so that the confusion is dispelled. Perpetuating ignorance only leads to more problems. Pointing out that REST is not an ideal mechanism for machine-to-machine communication is therefore extremely relevant. Fielding was heavily involved in the design of HTTP 1.1. The justification of the design decisions is REST and became his thesis. Implying that Fielding was disconnected from the design of the web is factually incorrect. Folks on Hacker News (where the web is obviously one of the most common application delivery mechanisms) might want to know how well-behaved web applications are constructed. That’s definitely relevant to this thread and community.