Roy is getting twitchy about his REST architecture again. Paul D tries to translate for the plebs such as myself. I've every sympathy with the two sides of this debate, even ignoring the bandwagon sales people. Ten years ago I saw James Clark in action on DSSSL then XSLT. I gave him a nickname, BSOP, brain the size of a planet (Hitchhikers reference). James seems to operate on a level (and I'm told at a speed) quite different from mere mortals. Others whose opinions I value have confirmed this. No complaint from me, I'm grateful for what James has given freely to the world of software. The perspective though is that the James's of this world are few and far between. Never having met Roy, I've heard enough to believe that he's quite possibly in a similar category. His thinking seems far enough away from the people that are approaching REST for the first time that there is almost too big a gap. Roy has forgotten more than most are likely to learn about HTTP. When I want to use REST to get a message over that's the focus, not architectural issues. I think this is one of the reasons that REST is still misunderstood. Until such as Paul and a good few others do some really good job of 'translating' from architecture to ... whatever you want to call the practical layer of thinking that more common folk work at, then REST will be misunderstood, 'adapted for use' (A shit, I'll add this to get it to work approach) and otherwise abused due to misunderstanding.

I'm almost convinced that Roy can't|won't|is too busy to do such a trnaslation. It's down to others to try.

I think it's worth doing.