One problem that I find is that it is so unstandarized and ad-hoc beyond the network level that you basically need a complete bespoke client/parser for every AP

One problem that I find is that it is so unstandarized and ad-hoc beyond the network level that you basically need a complete bespoke client/parser for every API, even within larger companies if the teams are more independent. Meanwhile if you have 1 way to do gRPC or GraphQL clients they fit for anything and you can focus on what you actually want to do with the API. GraphQL especially is excellent with this, with Apollo federation [1] allowing you to interconnect all the APIs of your complete company into 1 single endpoint and reference each other's data, which is extremely powerful and allows development to move fast if done right. [1] https://www.apollographql.com/docs/federation/ https://www.apollographql.com/docs/federation/