Comment by BrenBarn

> Furthermore, the initial cognitive overhead of building a truly hypermedia-driven client was perceived as a significant barrier. It felt easier for a developer to read documentation and hardcode a URI template like /users/{id}/orders than to write a client that could dynamically parse a _links section and discover the “orders” URI at runtime.

It "was perceived as" a barrier because it is a barrier. It "felt easier" because it is easier. The by-the-book REST principles aren't a good cost-benefit tradeoff for common cases.

It is like saying that your microwave should just have one button that you press to display a menu of "set timer", "cook", "defrost", etc., and then one other button you use to select from the menu, and then when you choose one it shows another menu of what power level and then another for what time, etc. It's more cumbersome than just having some built-in buttons and learning what they do.

I actually own a device that works in that one-button way. It's an OBD engine code reader. It only has two buttons, basically "next" and "select" and everything is menus. Even for a use case that basically only has two operations ("read the codes" and "clear a code"), it is noticeably cumbersome.

Also, the fact that people still suggest it's indispensable to read Fielding's dissertation is the kind of thing that should give everyone pause. If the ideas are good there should be many alternative statements for general audiences or different perspectives. No one says that you don't truly understand physics unless you read Newton's Principia.