You describe religion as a set of beliefs based on some core principles which cannot be experimentally tested.
You suggest that based on the Wikipedia article it's hard to figure out what REST actually is.
Wikipedia defines REST as something adhering to some key design principles:
1)Application state and functionality abstracted into resources
2)Uniquely addressable resources using a universal syntax for use in hypermedia links
3)A uniform interface for resources for the transfer of state between the client and the resource.
4)A protocol which is client/server, stateless, cacheable and layered.
That seems like a pretty specific design criteria to me, and not at all dogmatic. Moreover, there have been a number of comparisons of REST Vs. Other architectural styles (see http://www.mnot.net/blog/2005/11/07/REST_vs). And a number of benefits of adhering to REST can be shown.
That said, obviously, like everything else it's not perfect, but it's easy for you to refer to people who advocate the architectural style as a working practice because you clearly don't fully understand it yet given quotes like, It is a nice convention for pretty urls, for example. As URL/URI style has not one iota to do with REST other than resources are uniquely addressable.
You suggest that based on the Wikipedia article it's hard to figure out what REST actually is.
Wikipedia defines REST as something adhering to some key design principles: 1)Application state and functionality abstracted into resources 2)Uniquely addressable resources using a universal syntax for use in hypermedia links 3)A uniform interface for resources for the transfer of state between the client and the resource. 4)A protocol which is client/server, stateless, cacheable and layered.
That seems like a pretty specific design criteria to me, and not at all dogmatic. Moreover, there have been a number of comparisons of REST Vs. Other architectural styles (see http://www.mnot.net/blog/2005/11/07/REST_vs). And a number of benefits of adhering to REST can be shown.
That said, obviously, like everything else it's not perfect, but it's easy for you to refer to people who advocate the architectural style as a working practice because you clearly don't fully understand it yet given quotes like, It is a nice convention for pretty urls, for example. As URL/URI style has not one iota to do with REST other than resources are uniquely addressable.