People are far to concerned about whether an API is "true REST" or not, as if being "REST" is some kind of mark of quality. But nobody have yet made a convincin

People are far to concerned about whether an API is "true REST" or not, as if being "REST" is some kind of mark of quality. But nobody have yet made a convincing case that HATEOAS is even particularly useful for machine-to-machine integration. But a number of properties of REST are very useful for API's, for example the focus on data and URL's and the explicit distinction between methods which are safe and methods which have side effects. The conversation should be about what patterns help us build useful API's, not about canonical or heretical REST.