&gt; I believe the greatest failure of REST is that it is unable to set clear rules and boundaries as to what is REST and what is NOT REST.<p>It hasn&#x27;t failed in this.  The principles are <i>very</i> unambiguous.  The problem is that people don&#x27;t actually read the source material and just follow crappy tutorials and ape other systems without understanding what REST is.  Then they go on to build things that aren&#x27;t REST, they go on to write crappy tutorials themselves, and everybody learning from them and aping their systems fail just as badly.  The problem is not clarity of communication, it&#x27;s bad PR.<p>&gt; I want to see a canonical implementation of what an ideal REST architecture is. Never saw one.<p>You&#x27;re using a pretty good example right now.  The World-Wide Web is an implementation of the REST architecture.  It&#x27;s not perfect, but it&#x27;s the archetype REST was born from.<p>&gt; REST is at best a set of vague ideas and I understand why a lot of developers do not like that. because I don&#x27;t.<p>Look, it&#x27;s really not difficult to find the concrete, unambiguous description of REST.  It&#x27;s right here:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ics.uci.edu&#x2F;~fielding&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;dissertation&#x2F;rest_arch_style.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ics.uci.edu&#x2F;~fielding&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;dissertation&#x2F;rest_arch...</a><p>All you had to do was Google it or look at the Wikipedia page.  There is nothing vague about it whatsoever.  The problem is not that REST is vague, the problem is people just don&#x27;t bother reading the source material.