Why is REST so popular? Because it's easy to implement and works for lots of use cases. I'm sorry that you found places it doesn't, but in the real world, having been through that SOAP pain it's being compared to, I'd say there's not even a comparison. Everyone seems to want to find a reason to dislike product/technology/feature X but in this case, X is just better than anything we've had for a 90% adoption case.
What is with medium.com? Why is it so many links to this site are full of hateful hipsteresque opinions looking to sound smarter and more insightful than they actually are?
I avoid medium posts as much as possible. Everyone is an expert on there with very strong opinions telling me how every technology older than 2 years and not written in javascript is obsolete/dead/not the right way/new .
And what's with the UI on their publications. They take up top 25% of the screen with the branding and navbar and bottom 10% asking me to sign in and both sticks on the screen. Who approved that?