Comment by daxfohl

Yeah, IMO the whole thing was a pie in the sky dream 20 years ago that we'd have magical APIs that automagically all work together in harmony by following HATEOAS links to do what they want. So it would be like the internet of APIs and a "universal client" would be the browser.

But what was misunderstood in that vision is that context can't readily be conveyed through some simplistic HATEOAS verbs. In the real internet of internets, with browsers and HTMLs, you have help links, positioning, colors, animations, highlighting, decades of UX research to help people understand what the various buttons do. HATEOAS was supposed to provide this in an automated way as a "browser for APIs", but ultimately the concept is far too simplistic to guide anything beyond an obvious CRUD model. And for an obvious CRUD model, well, it's unnecessary.

So anyway, that's my position after a decade of experience with it.