> Can you steelman allowing terminology to evolve and allowing new forms to be the assumed/default meaning?
Obviously, terminology does evolve over time. The word "hat", for example, has a default meaning of "baseball hat", even though the default meaning was something else decades / centuries ago. Baseball hats are by far the most common kind of hat, so it makes sense for the to be the default.
This is not at all what is happening in the case of "API", which is why it annoys me. Hardware APIs and library APIs dwarf the use of REST APIs. But web developers have this tendency to think that what they do is the only thing that is relevant. Therefore, they think API == REST.
It is like if a bitcoin advocate used the term "coin" to refer only to bitcoin, and "metal coin" to refer to regular coins. They want bitcoin to be the default meaning of "coin", but it isn't and it causes confusion in regular conversation.
Obviously, terminology does evolve over time. The word "hat", for example, has a default meaning of "baseball hat", even though the default meaning was something else decades / centuries ago. Baseball hats are by far the most common kind of hat, so it makes sense for the to be the default.
This is not at all what is happening in the case of "API", which is why it annoys me. Hardware APIs and library APIs dwarf the use of REST APIs. But web developers have this tendency to think that what they do is the only thing that is relevant. Therefore, they think API == REST.
It is like if a bitcoin advocate used the term "coin" to refer only to bitcoin, and "metal coin" to refer to regular coins. They want bitcoin to be the default meaning of "coin", but it isn't and it causes confusion in regular conversation.