4 ms·

Because no one knows what the hell the acronym means, except that it sounds good. Everyone wants to be RESTful. RESTful is chill. It's resting - good programme

Because no one knows what the hell the acronym means, except that it sounds good. Everyone wants to be RESTful. RESTful is chill. It's resting - good programmers are lazy! But RESTful is resting while using an acronym, which is technical and sophisticated. To be RESTful is to be one of the smart lazy ones. Now if you're one of the few who cares what your acronyms mean, you look it up and ... "representational state transfer". How do you transfer state without representing it? I guess everything that transfers state is RESTful. And everything is state, so everything that transfers is RESTful. So every API is RESTful! Great, I guess if we make an API we're one of those cool smart and lazy people. And let's make sure to call it RESTful so that everyone knows how cool, smart, and lazy-yet-technical we are. Roy Fielding made a meaningless but cool-sounding acronym popular and has reaped the predictable consequences.

cmonnow 4y ago
this whole discussion seems pedantic. whether it is a local function or a remote function, both caller and callee need to agree on the parameters (input), and returns (output). I send you X. You send me back Y. That's it - this is the contract we both agree to. OP is saying - the caller should NEVER do anything with Y other than display it on screen, for it to be called REST. Well - why even display it, why not just discard it ? Calling print(Y) is as good as calling businesslogic(Y). Whatever further logic a human plans to do after print(Y), a machine can do the same. In other words, REST is just step 1 of returning data from a remote function. The moment you code any additional logic on the returned data (which is 99% of use cases), it's not REST anymore ? Sounds like an extremely limited definition /use case of REST.
- civilized 4y ago
  I found the discussion flat-out silly. It basically says something is only "self-describing" if it's an HTML blob, but in the example given, the JSON blob is actually easier to understand. Sure, you can run the HTML through a browser and it looks nicer, but who cares? You can also render a JSON blob with a slightly different set of rules. And if we don't bother with the rendering on either side, it remains just as obvious what the JSON means. If these people wanted their ideas to stand the rest of time, rather than merely the acronyms, they should have had better ideas.
drmini 4y ago
This is hilariously inaccurate. There’s a whole dissertation on what REST is and it’s easily graspable, if you care to read it. REST is about hypermedia, if there is not hypermedia, it is not REST. It must be said that confidence with which you present your inaccurate assertions is only going to make others as confused as you are.
- civilized 4y ago
  If you found it hilarious, well, that was the point: the words in the acronym are very un-denotative, so it encourages deconstruction to mean whatever the reader wants it to mean. If I truly want people to understand what I'm talking about, rather than just make something popular, I don't give them evocative, fluffy slogans and then direct them to a dissertation to find out what the fluff really means. I use carefully chosen, denotative words in my slogan. HATEOAS is a good example of prizing clarity over vague evocativeness. It's all about hypermedia, so hypermedia is in the acronym. If I don't do this, I can't be too upset at what predictably ensues, as people take my cool-sounding slogans and repurpose them to legitimize their own ideas.

cmonnow 4y ago

this whole discussion seems pedantic. whether it is a local function or a remote function, both caller and callee need to agree on the parameters (input), and returns (output). I send you X. You send me back Y. That's it - this is the contract we both agree to. OP is saying - the caller should NEVER do anything with Y other than display it on screen, for it to be called REST. Well - why even display it, why not just discard it ? Calling print(Y) is as good as calling businesslogic(Y). Whatever further logic a human plans to do after print(Y), a machine can do the same. In other words, REST is just step 1 of returning data from a remote function. The moment you code any additional logic on the returned data (which is 99% of use cases), it's not REST anymore ? Sounds like an extremely limited definition /use case of REST.

civilized 4y ago
I found the discussion flat-out silly. It basically says something is only "self-describing" if it's an HTML blob, but in the example given, the JSON blob is actually easier to understand. Sure, you can run the HTML through a browser and it looks nicer, but who cares? You can also render a JSON blob with a slightly different set of rules. And if we don't bother with the rendering on either side, it remains just as obvious what the JSON means. If these people wanted their ideas to stand the rest of time, rather than merely the acronyms, they should have had better ideas.

drmini 4y ago

This is hilariously inaccurate. There’s a whole dissertation on what REST is and it’s easily graspable, if you care to read it. REST is about hypermedia, if there is not hypermedia, it is not REST. It must be said that confidence with which you present your inaccurate assertions is only going to make others as confused as you are.

civilized 4y ago
If you found it hilarious, well, that was the point: the words in the acronym are very un-denotative, so it encourages deconstruction to mean whatever the reader wants it to mean. If I truly want people to understand what I'm talking about, rather than just make something popular, I don't give them evocative, fluffy slogans and then direct them to a dissertation to find out what the fluff really means. I use carefully chosen, denotative words in my slogan. HATEOAS is a good example of prizing clarity over vague evocativeness. It's all about hypermedia, so hypermedia is in the acronym. If I don't do this, I can't be too upset at what predictably ensues, as people take my cool-sounding slogans and repurpose them to legitimize their own ideas.