I am still learning programming the hard way - namely, by checking out how other folks do it, then struggling to do it myself. However, I've learned enough, I think, to get the impression that some people get rrrreeeallly attached to their architecture.
I have come to believe that all these models, "patterns" and such are very useful tools, but only that. Seems like we keep having these religous wars about language, patterns, architecture, whatever.
All of it is only useful as long as it, well, useful. When the "architecture" starts hindering the function, it has stopped doing it's job.
You raise very good points though are we asking to be saved from REST or REST Pedants who argue about minutia ?
Some things in the Flickr API could be nicer with more HATE. For instance, currently, the client needs to know how to turn a returned photo ID into a URL. Fielding would ask why the API doesn't just return URLs in the first place. (One answer: because that would be inanely repetitive.)
But that's mostly cosmetic. Yes, we expect the client to translate IDs to page URLs, but we also expect it to understand what the difference between a photo and a user is.
Nobody has explained to me how "Hypermedia" APIs are supposed to be traversable without a programmer embedding significant domain knowledge into the library anyway.
Programming is an art as well as a science; and those papers were guides to direct us toward something useful, not to be followed as creed and memorized to be recited in a religious ceremony. The sooner people learn that, the better.
In all, I agree with your the post.
Naaaaaaaaaah.
