I find it difficult to take it seriously because the people making it do not acknowledge any of the history that has led them to this point.
They are in a point where they can say that the architecture that underpins the web does not solve their current problems because they are building things on top of that solution.
For a lot of people the OS is a wrapper for the browser and that's it. We could reasonably say for those people the OS does not solve any of their problems, except for the fact that it exists to enable them to have a browser and go to the few places they go to.
HATEOAS doesn't solve many developer's problems in the same way because those problems are enabled by sitting on top of the solution that is HATEOAS.
Also I can't remember who it was that said it, it was back in the time when people were arguing about SOAP vs. REST which, well whatever, I think it might have been Tim Bray or Paul Prescod and they said in discussing what was needed to build a world wide network for information sharing they were predisposed to accept the arguments of the people who had actually done such a thing.
I am afraid the original web architecture is not really that useful or important for the "web application" model. I mean the basic idea is you ship an entire application in javascript or whatever and then make API calls. The user is never meant to leave the "app" anyway. The rest of the digital universe might as well not exist.
Is the model actually being applied to sites it shouldn't be, causing developers to redevelop functionality (badly) already provided by the web?
I believe the answer to the first is no, and the second is yes?
A badly applied model is a mistake, and one should not base arguments on such mistakes.
the analogy probably only goes so far but it is meant to suggest that there might be a entire class of useful things that are not yet developed because the machinery for doing so is not fully developed / understood.
> A lot of us have tried very hard to design software this way and afterwards had to admit it did not work
I can only respect that. But I think we can also take a step back and look at all these web applications that do work (in a certain context) and ask whether they can withstand and evolve to cope with the information explosion that only gets worse. Evolvability, making use of linked data, composing useful things from diverse sources etc. These are not pipedreams or academic pursuits. Having designs that will help build tools adapted to this reality could unlock enormous potential.
The argument "it does not solve any problem I have" must be taken seriously for what it implies, but has less serious implications if the problem domain people consider is narrower than what the hypermedia design envisaged two decades ago.
This feels a bit like mathematics: expediency, predominant business models driving requirements etc dont change fundamental truths or properties. To say 'i dont need complex numbers' just begs for Fourier to come up with fourier analysis :-)