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I disagree. Dogma/religion fits REST very well. It's also a very useful way to describe it, and the concept of religion is very rich and carries a lot of infor

by gleb 18y ago

I disagree. Dogma/religion fits REST very well. It's also a very useful way to describe it, and the concept of religion is very rich and carries a lot of information in it. Religion is a set of beliefs based on some core principles which cannot be experimentally tested. The beliefs system itself it resilient to refutation, and can "self-heal" if any of its predictions are proven false. While core principles cannot be proven false, they may require some suspension of disbelief from a reasonable person. By their very nature such sets of beliefs are very powerful, and tend to spread and persist. The flip side is that religion has proven to be an inefficient way to generate progress (while, say, science has proven to be efficient). REST relies on base belief of "resources" and "neglected HTTP verbs", and, by reference, "religion of HTTP." It has its scripture of Roy Fielding dissertation. It's also hard to pin to anything (try to figure out what REST actually is from it's wikipedia article). A relevant snippet from Richard Feynman was posted here a while back: http://www.collectedthoughts.com/quote.aspx?id=11302 http://www.collectedthoughts.com/quote.aspx?id=11302 Btw, REST certainly does have some useful beliefs in. It is a nice convention for pretty urls, for example. This does not require a suspension of disbelief.

sh1mmer 18y ago
You describe religion as a set of beliefs based on some core principles which cannot be experimentally tested. You suggest that based on the Wikipedia article it's hard to figure out what REST actually is. Wikipedia defines REST as something adhering to some key design principles: 1)Application state and functionality abstracted into resources 2)Uniquely addressable resources using a universal syntax for use in hypermedia links 3)A uniform interface for resources for the transfer of state between the client and the resource. 4)A protocol which is client/server, stateless, cacheable and layered. That seems like a pretty specific design criteria to me, and not at all dogmatic. Moreover, there have been a number of comparisons of REST Vs. Other architectural styles (see http://www.mnot.net/blog/2005/11/07/REST_vs http://www.mnot.net/blog/2005/11/07/REST_vs). And a number of benefits of adhering to REST can be shown. That said, obviously, like everything else it's not perfect, but it's easy for you to refer to people who advocate the architectural style as a working practice because you clearly don't fully understand it yet given quotes like, It is a nice convention for pretty urls, for example. As URL/URI style has not one iota to do with REST other than resources are uniquely addressable.

by gleb 18y ago

sh1mmer 18y ago

You describe religion as a set of beliefs based on some core principles which cannot be experimentally tested. You suggest that based on the Wikipedia article it's hard to figure out what REST actually is. Wikipedia defines REST as something adhering to some key design principles: 1)Application state and functionality abstracted into resources 2)Uniquely addressable resources using a universal syntax for use in hypermedia links 3)A uniform interface for resources for the transfer of state between the client and the resource. 4)A protocol which is client/server, stateless, cacheable and layered. That seems like a pretty specific design criteria to me, and not at all dogmatic. Moreover, there have been a number of comparisons of REST Vs. Other architectural styles (see http://www.mnot.net/blog/2005/11/07/REST_vs http://www.mnot.net/blog/2005/11/07/REST_vs). And a number of benefits of adhering to REST can be shown. That said, obviously, like everything else it's not perfect, but it's easy for you to refer to people who advocate the architectural style as a working practice because you clearly don't fully understand it yet given quotes like, It is a nice convention for pretty urls, for example. As URL/URI style has not one iota to do with REST other than resources are uniquely addressable.