Thomas, sorry. I would actually think Roy (and the actual elite that built HTTP in the 90s) would agree with you on your first point - he defines REST, but tha

Thomas, sorry. I would actually think Roy (and the actual elite that built HTTP in the 90s) would agree with you on your first point - he defines REST, but that doesn't define the Web, which is hundreds of thousands of scrappy applications. REST was intended to cover the common case of the Web so that the standards themselves will be optimized to the common case. The "self appointed" elite are wrong to suggest that REST is the Web, but to me it's just as wrong to suggest that REST doesn't provide a useful abstract model of what makes the web work. Regarding CGI, yeah, it was a hack, and it worked. But look at how website design evolved -- sometimes those websites sucked because they changed URIs all the time breaking bookmarks, search engines, etc. These practices weren't thought of in academic terms, no, but the point is that there was a theory underlying what emergent properties made websites good and popular (stable URIs for example, which led to better search, and bookmarking), which led to mainstream aphorisms like "cool URIs don't change" in the 97-98 timeframe. This was eventually codified academically in Roy's thesis a few years later. My point is that this wasn't completely accidental, there were people actively advocating "good practices" in the 90s, even without a formal published theory - it was informally understood by those who were on the mailing lists. And I agree, RPC isn't wrong, the point is that it is fundamentally flawed approach if your goal is interoperability at a global scale. If you want client A to talk to server B, have at it, just don't call it REST or assume you'll get the desirable properties. Many so-called REST APIs aren't globally interoperable due to this conceptual baggage, but some are better than others. As for the emotional appeal, my point is... these debates have been discussed ad nauseam for nearly 15 years, with many cases involving personal sacrifice (justified or not). Debating on the merits is fine, but having ot go back to first principles every 5 years for a new generation means we are just spinning our wheels. That's why there often is appeal to history or authority. i.e. "Read the mailing lists, they're archived", etc. That's not a great situation, I admit. But most new technologies have traditionally had a "vendor engine" behind them pushing marketing, training, books, etc. to perpetuate the meme. That seems to be less common with the open source / internet vendor world, or maybe it's just that REST is still too new and misunderstood.