alt Hacker NewsI just had to explain to some newbies that SOAP is a protocol with rigid rules; REST is an architectural style with flexibility. The latter means that you have to work and document really well and consumers of the API need tools like Postman etc. to be even able to use the API. With SOAP, you get most of that for free.
Postman is just a terrible GUI for making HTTP requests. Using a REST API can be as simple as `curl https://api.github.com/repos/torvalds/linux`, and you can even open that link in a browser. SOAP requires sending a ton of XML [0] - it is not very usable without a dedicated SOAP-aware tool.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP#Example_message_(encapsul...