Comment by mort96
3 days ago
I disagree. It's a perfectly fine approach to many kinds of APIs, and people aren't "mediocre" just for using widely accepted words to describe this approach to designing HTTP APIs.
3 days ago
I disagree. It's a perfectly fine approach to many kinds of APIs, and people aren't "mediocre" just for using widely accepted words to describe this approach to designing HTTP APIs.
> and people aren't "mediocre" just for using widely accepted words
If you work off "widely accepted words" when there is disagreeing primary literature, you are probably mediocre.
So your view is that the person who coins a term forever has full rights to dictate the meaning of that term, regardless of what meaning turns out to be useful in practice and gets broadly accepted by the community? And you think that anyone who disagrees with such an ultra-prescriptivist view of linguistics is somehow a "mediocre programmer"? Do I have that right?
I have no dog in this fight, but 90% of technical people around me keep calling authentication authorization no matter how many times I explain the difference to those who even care to listen. It's misused in almost every application developed in this country.
Sometimes it really is bad and "everybody" can be very wrong, yes. None of us are native English speakers (most don't speak English at all), so these foreign sounding words all look the same, it's a forgivable "offence".
No. For all people who use "REST": If reading Fielding is the exception that gets you on HN, than not reading Fielding is what average person does. Mediocre.
Using Fieldings term to refer to something else is an extra source of confusion which kinda makes the term useless. Nobody knows what the speaker exactly refers no.
The point is lost on you though. There are REST APIs (almost none), and there are "REST APIs" - a battle cry of mediocre developers. Now go tell them their restful has nothing to do with rest. And I am now just repeating stuff said in article and in comments here.
Why should I (or you, for that matter) go and tell them their restful has nothing to do with rest? Why does it matter? They're making perfectly fine HTTP APIs, and they use the industry standard term to describe what kind of HTTP API it is.
It's convenient to have a word for "HTTP API where entities are represented by JSON objects with unique paths, errors are communicated via HTTP status codes and CRUD actions use the appropriate HTTP methods". The term we have for that kind of API is "rest". And that's fine.
1. Never said I'm going to tell them. It's on someone else. I'm just going to lower my expectation from such developers accordingly.
2. So just "HTTP API". And that would suffice. Adding "restful" is trying to be extra-smart or fit in if everyone's around an extra-smart.
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I think the pushback is because you labelled people who create "REST APIs" as "mediocre" without any explanation. That may be a good starting point.
It’s the worst kind of pedantry. Simultaneously arrogant, uncharitable and privileged.
Most of us are not writing proper Restful APIs because we’re dealing with legacy software, weird requirements the egos of other developers. We’re not able to build whatever we want.
And I agree with the feature article.
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