Counterpoint: This all got a lot worse and more confusing for me when I read the dissertation. What people seemed to call RESTful struck me as a bit convoluted but fine and workable. But after I read the dissertation, it was clear that all that was "wrong", but I was left without any real concept of what was both right and workable. It took me years to realize I could just ignore the whole thing and focus on designing useful interfaces. (And that, indeed, this is what most people had been doing already.)