If I wanted to take an idea that someone else named X and bastardize it and still call it X, I would use that same excuse you just used.

You could use that same excuse, but unless your use caught on and reflected how the majority uses the term, it wouldn't be the same case at all.

I don't think any "majority" even cares about REST let alone know it exists. I also don't see jargon as something that may or may not "catch on", I see it as a way to organize ideas in a professional area so as to ease precise communication. If my peers keep changing the meaning of jargon then it makes it harder for everyone to have meaningful and constructive discussion about our field.

This all can be avoided if people make it as a rule not to reuse names for a new concept Y that is already being used for concept X. What do you see as the reason to reuse names? Do you think we're running out of them?

>I don't think any "majority" even cares about REST let alone know it exists.

Obviously, as its a technical term, "majority" here refers to the majority of the respective technical audience, not the majority across all people.

>I also don't see jargon as something that may or may not "catch on", I see it as a way to organize ideas in a professional area so as to ease precise communication.

The best way to "ease precise communication" though is to use a term as it turned out to be used/understood by most people -- not to insist of its initial intended meaning (which in IT could be off by several decades to its modern use).

>This all can be avoided if people make it as a rule not to reuse names for a new concept Y that is already being used for concept X. What do you see as the reason to reuse names? Do you think we're running out of them?

The thing is, REST initially was some random thing some guy wrote. A person totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, not some standards body.

REST became a thing and got relevant only after it was adopted by a critical mass, and in the process people used it in different ways, adopted what they liked, etc. Those changes due to impact with real and different uses, reflect into what people call "REST" today.

Once we called "computers" actual humans doing computations [1]. Then it was some huge machines in corporations. Now we can even call our phones that. It would silly to insist that we should keep computers to its meaning at any fixed point in time.

[1] https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals...

> The best way to "ease precise communication" though is to use a term as it turned out to be used/understood by most people -- not to insist of its initial intended meaning (which in IT could be off by several decades to its modern use).

How do we know we're up-to-date with the latest definition? And what if someone disagrees with what is the latest definition? How do we even know what "most" people think is the latest definition? Do you see how your suggestion is unrealistic?

But, your next argument is the strongest here, and I stand corrected. I like your computer example. So I'd say if we deprecate the thing that the word meant before (human computers, or REST as defined by one guy and never used) then it's OK to reuse it. I don't know the REST story and have no reason to doubt your version of it, so thanks for the argument!