← Back to context

Comment by Eldodi

4 days ago

With the v2 spec, MCP became a lot closer to APIs by becoming stateless. And there is now a push to use HTTP verbs more extensively to improve caching even better in v3. MCP is converging into APIs but wit great auth and auditing

10 comments

Eldodi

Reply
Zambyte  4 days ago

... Are both of you using "API" as a synonym for "REST"?

  • imtringued  4 days ago

    This is the worst moment in time to talk about "REST".

    Do you mean the Roy Fielding "REST" or the HTTP API "REST"?

    Calling the latter "REST" is wrong. It's like calling a hermit crab a snail.

    Edit: I forgot to mention, the former is gaining relevance as the elusive evolvable clients are now a thing.

    • jazzypants  4 days ago

      I'm not trying to be a dick, but it's pretty hilarious that we made these two posts at the exact same time [0]. I totally get what you're saying, but I don't understand the motivation behind it. A properly designed HTTP API is what Roy Fielding was discussing in his dissertation, but he was obviously talking about HTML pages full of hyperlinks. At the end of the day, does it really matter much if the definition is only 80% correct if the majority of the population understands the basic gist of the conversation?

      [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49908582

      1 reply →

  • jazzypants  4 days ago

    It's annoying, but that's been pretty common for the last decade. It's just like how everyone uses "REST" to mean "JSON RPC". In the end, we all basically know what the other ones are talking about, so it's pretty pointless to get bogged down in semantics.

    • Zambyte  4 days ago

      It's common when talking about web services, where the kind of API is generally unambiguous. The problem here is we're discussing different kinds of APIs (shell commands, MCP, REST / JSON RPC) and so calling one of those kinds of APIs "API" is very confusing.