Hacker News Reader

It's a good sign that REST is not perfect for everything. Trying to be everything to everyone is a trap that framework and API designers fall into. You should actually aim for making most people mostly happy, but leave some people rather bummed out.

(Google tech Talk on Designing an API.) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3733345136856180693

If your plans make everyone happy, you're probably trying to do too much.

View on HN

Unfortunately, you find none to often folks using REST to solve a wide range of problems that it isn't suited for. The point of this post is to point that fact out: just because REST exists doesn't mean you have to use it. Believe it or not, this is actually a surprise to a lot of people, especially those trying to be in some way 'Web 2.0'.

Quick EDIT: I've actually seen people try to design fundamentally stateful APIs using REST. These people admit they are stateful, and that they must be stateful, yet they continue to use REST because it's what various web companies use and promote (for totally different problems).

I totally agree... the issue is that some people don't realize that it's not the answer to all problems, and chaos ensues...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com