> You should just know that this makes zero sense to most of us.
Unless you've held an election, you only speak on behalf of yourself and yourself alone. If you're having a hard time understanding basic concepts then naturally it's unlikely that you'll have an epiphany in a discussion where you're decided to take an hostile stance towards details you're not understanding.
Meanwhile, you can ponder how these specifications you're claiming you and those you claim to be representing don't understand are actually used extensively, and it's such a basic concept that it even features in intro tutorials to REST APIs. Perhaps that's a good sign that basic concepts such as web linking aren't that complex or hard to understand as you've tried to assert they are.
They provide what you've described as an alternative to what most consider the normal way of representing resource links. It doesn't make any of the claims you are making as to why one is more valid than others.
So once more: sure we can do things your way, but why is it better? Every other source says link headers are an option. You claim they're superior. Why are they better?
Why does representing links in headers and not bodies make the API easier to understand, navigate, or use? How does it clarify the interactions? What do I gain from it?
So far, all you've said is "relationships are metadata" or something, which is not how most people consider relationships, and even if it we're true, it doesn't explain why my response can't contain metadata, as long as it's marked as such.
Unless you've held an election, you only speak on behalf of yourself and yourself alone. If you're having a hard time understanding basic concepts then naturally it's unlikely that you'll have an epiphany in a discussion where you're decided to take an hostile stance towards details you're not understanding.
Meanwhile, you can ponder how these specifications you're claiming you and those you claim to be representing don't understand are actually used extensively, and it's such a basic concept that it even features in intro tutorials to REST APIs. Perhaps that's a good sign that basic concepts such as web linking aren't that complex or hard to understand as you've tried to assert they are.
https://restfulapi.net/hateoas/