[Barrera]

Several commenters take the position that the distinction doesn't matter. This is "an old person's battle." What matters is getting things done.

I'm not so sure. For one thing, it's of both theoretical and practical interest to trace the path of how a technical term comes to mean its opposite over time. If you're in the business of creating technical terms (everyone building technologies is), you might learn something by studying the REST story.

For one thing, Fielding's writing is not exactly approachable. REST is described in a PhD dissertation that is dense, packed with jargon and footnotes, and almost devoid of graphics or examples. His scarce later writings on REST were not much better.

Others who thought they understood Fielding, but who could write/speak better than him, came along with different ideas. Their ideas stuck and Fielding's didn't because he wrote like an academic and they did not.

The other thing that happened is that the technological ground shifted. To even begin to understand Fielding requires forgetting much or all of what one knows about modern web technologies. Part of that shift is the timing of Fielding's rediscovery with deep frustration over XML/RPC.

[xcambar]

I wrote that it is an old person's battle.

And I'd like to clarity that never did I mean that the knowledge and history fueling this so-called battle was meant to the trash.

Quite the opposite actually. As a self-described old person, I much appreciate the historical perspective and the subtleties and the changes the term has seen.

[RandyRanderson]

REST, SCRUM, Agile, etc these are just cargo cults built from temerity (in the blindness sense).