You'll be surprised that a lot of what blogs and online communities peddle as cool or not cool doesn't reflect the actual industry and professional preferences

You'll be surprised that a lot of what blogs and online communities peddle as cool or not cool doesn't reflect the actual industry and professional preferences at all. REST is trendy because everyone sells imaginary features like self-discovery, performance and universal clients, while actually shipping random ad-hoc JSON snippets over "pretty" URLs. REST is cool because it doesn't actually exist, so there's nothing specific to criticize about it that sticks. Any attempt at REST critique is quickly drown out by the noise of thousands of REST fans saying "but this is not REST".