I think the pushback is because you labelled people who create "REST APIs" as "mediocre" without any explanation. That may be a good starting point.

It’s the worst kind of pedantry. Simultaneously arrogant, uncharitable and privileged.

Most of us are not writing proper Restful APIs because we’re dealing with legacy software, weird requirements the egos of other developers. We’re not able to build whatever we want.

And I agree with the feature article.

> It’s the worst kind of pedantry. Simultaneously arrogant, uncharitable and privileged.

I'd go as far as to claim it is by far the dumbest kind, because it has no value, serves no purpose, and solves no problem. It's just trivia used to attack people.