Data exchange Memes

Remember when APIs had variety? SOAP, XML-RPC, maybe some GraphQL for the adventurous? Yeah, those days are gone. Now it's just REST/JSON everywhere, and web devs treat it like it's the only option that ever existed. The industry collectively decided that sending human-readable key-value pairs over HTTP is the pinnacle of data exchange, and honestly? They're not wrong, but the lack of creativity is hilarious. SOAP developers are somewhere crying into their WSDL files while the rest of us are just vibing with our { "status": "ok" } responses.