Hypermedia hype has always struck me as parallel to the "semantic web" nonsense from the late 90s. "If we just use RDF triples to encode everything then machin

Hypermedia hype has always struck me as parallel to the "semantic web" nonsense from the late 90s. "If we just use RDF triples to encode everything then machines can learn that apples are fruits and fruits are good for you, thus apples are good for you! Huzzah!" Then, Microsoft invented SOAP. "If we just have a WSDL that explains all of our API, then we can have automated methods to communicate between services! Programmers can just auto-generate code and life is great!" Except it doesn't work that way. Most WSDL parsers auto-generate code that you then hand-edit and maintain over time. And, you, as the programmer have to know what methods to call. SOAP is just excessive ceremony transmitted over XML - another excessively rigid structure. So then we got JSON REST APIs. Simple text structures. Reasonable defaults. Basic vernacular. Easily understood. What concerns me about Hypermedia APIs is that folks are using the same sorts of grandiose, architecture astronaut-y stuff that we got out of the last two failed revolutions. Hypermedia API proponents say that REST APIs are "highly coupled" (to the data model and versioning) and don't expose workflows. Heck, that's why REST is so pervasive - they're super easy to write and consume/interact with. Enterprisey folks are so focused on long-term extensibility and maintainability that they overlook the cognitive overhead and inability to work with it on a daily basis. And that you in fact, tend to move slower in development because you can't comprehend or follow what is going on. And that all abstractions leak, leading to libraries and tools (SavonRB) that don't quite work if an API doesn't follow the spec exactly (and they never, EVER follow the spec 100%). My attitude is the opposite: Don't design your APIs as if you expect them to be the next 1,000 year reich. If your API stays small and nimble enough, your consumers will also be able to be flexible to accomodate it. Yes, if you have a User REST API and you decide that your app no longer has users, well, then you have to get rid of it. But adding another layer or two of hierarchy and ceremony on top via Hypermedia wouldn't solve that either! Fundamental universe changes ought to break shit! From what I've seen (I have a subscription to designinghypermediaapis.com which is very well written) Hypermedia APIs are an over-complicated solution to a problem that has a reasonable solution. Yes, links are nice. Want to propose a "Standard" to handle links? Okay, although that's REST! If you have an Object and you want to DELETE it, I don't need to know the URL. I have a convention via REST that allows me to derive it from my data. If that's different, OK, use this thing. But Hypermedia APIs are a lot more than just links (state machines, workflows, media types, etc.)