Another essay from the same site helped this make more sense to me. If your immediate reaction was "But my code doesn't know how to handle the links in the response!", check it out:
https://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.h...
https://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.h...
If the key principle of REST is one that is incompatible with computer clients, then a good starting point in a constructive dialogue would be to acknowledge that what they're really saying is that a RESTful API is an oxymoron.
Here’s how HATEOAS is supposed to be helpful for computers:
1. Out of band, humans create complex, useful, well defined media types that cover the space of the functionality they’re trying to define. These need to be well documented. This is where the whole thing falls down
2. Once you’ve got useful media types, you build servers that offer clients a “service document”, a collection of interesting resources (with resources potentially exposed with different media type representations, so newer better media types can be chosen when they’re created in the future, without needing to swap out your server)
3. Servers also define a variety of useful verbs they support, which can also expand over time
REST depends heavily on (1). Since almost no one bothers to do (1), the whole project gets tarnished by people trying to do the later stuff and calling it REST.
Don’t worry, it’s not. While some hypermedia is intended for humans, there is no reason a hypermedia might not be targeted at computers instead.