For years, REST APIs have been the standard.

Then GraphQL came in with promises like:

“Fetch exactly what you need”

“Reduce API calls”

“More flexible APIs”

But here’s the reality:

GraphQL is not a replacement for REST.

It’s a different trade-off.

Let’s break it down — with real code you can run .

🧠 What is REST?

REST is a resource-based API design.

You expose endpoints like:

GET /users/1 GET /users/1/orders

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Each endpoint returns fixed structure data .

⚙️ REST API — Fully Working Go Example

👉 Save as rest.go

package main

import ( "encoding/json" "log" "net/http" )

type User struct { ID int `json:"id"` Name string `json:"name"` Email string `json:"email"` }

func getUserHandler ( w http . ResponseWriter , r * http . Request ) { user := User { ID : 1 , Name : "John" , Email : "[email protected]" , }

w . Header () . Set ( "Content-Type" , "application/json" ) json . NewEncoder ( w ) . Encode ( user ) }

func main () { http .…