>> The important difference being that I need to figure out the peculiarities of each such web API
So if they say it is Roy Fielding certified, you would not have to figure out any "peculiarities"? I'd argue that creating a typical OpenAPI style spec which sticks to standard conventions is more professional than creating a pedantically HATEOAS API. Users of your API will be confused and confusion leads to bugs.
op's article could've been plucked from 2012 - this is one of my favorite rest rants from 2012: https://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2012/08/rest-epic-semantic-f...
..that was written before swagger/openAPI was a thing. now there's a real spec with real adoption and real tools and folks can let the whole rest-epic-semantic-fail be an early chapter of web devs doing what they do (like pointing at remotely relevant academic paper to justify what they're doing at work)