Oh, no — not another article comparing REST with GraphQL. I feel you!

In the last couple years, we’ve been flooded with blog posts, Twitter threads, and conference talks comparing REST with GraphQL. And while it’s true that we’ll make some comparisons in this article, I’m going to try to focus on a different aspect of this topic, something that is often overlooked when we build our services: the human-friendliness of GraphQL.

Say what?!

One of the biggest hidden benefits of GraphQL is its attractiveness to less technical people. It can open a whole new world of possibilities by making data more accessible to everyone around us. So in this article, we’re going to see which characteristics of GraphQL can make our services more human, and how that compares with the more traditional REST approach.

You might be thinking, “What’s the problem with REST? I can understand it perfectly!” And I agree with that to some extent, but bear with me for the next five minutes and let’s see if we can identify some of these “problems” with some more specific examples.

#graphql #rest #database #web-development