I don't understand comments like REST is hard to understand. As far as I can understand people like Tim Bray, all they are saying is "Why invent an abstraction that convolutes requests for information when HTTP already has all the API you really need". What's hard about that?
Dave Winer has invented this meme that REST is hazy philosphy while all he is being is a practical programmer with code to ship. HTTP and xml parsers hazy philosophy? In perl you can get a long way with LWP and XML::Simple.
People have different programming styles, but I have a feeling that this craving for toolkits is caused by the dizzyness caused by realizing that there really isn't more to it than that. It feels like cheating.
Obviously when the simplicity breaks - i.e. when a resource referenced by a uri isn't static enough for the uri to be useful in repeated GET requests for example - then you want to do something else.