I think it was a joke as GET requests are not supposed to change anything, but often they do (probably because many devs don't know about, understand or respect the RESTful concept).

EDIT: For completeness, I have to add, that I am also part of the group of people who have violated that concept. Maybe neither frequently nor recently, but I did it too :-/

> understand or respect the RESTful concept

It's nothing to do with REST. It's part of the HTTP spec and has always been, that "GET and HEAD methods should never have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval".

Well, if I am not mistaken, REST is just the articulated concept on which HTTP was built. So yes, the HTTP spec (probably) existed before REST became a term itself, but in the end, there is no reason to argue if REST defines it or HTTP.

> There's nothing stopping GET requests from having side effects.

> It's like pointing to a list of best practices and saying "everyone surely follows these."

It’s not a ‘best practice’ it’s literally the spec for the web.

What percent of developers do you think have even read the RFC?

Browsers take a more practical approach than "well, it's in the spec, they should know better" which is apparently what you're suggesting.

It's the same reason browsers will do their best to render completely ridiculous (much less spec-complaint) HTML.

To prove your point: If I remember correctly HN votes are sent as GET.