Andrae muses about what object-oriented programming is, and comes to a language theorist's conclusion:
Object Oriented Programming is any programming based on a combination of subtype polymorphism and open recursion
I'll take a RESTafarian stab it it:
Object-Oriented Programming divides application state into objects. Each object understands a set of functions and corresponding parameter lists (its interface type) that can be used to access and manipulate the subset of application state it selects.
Objects with similar functions can be accessed without knowing the precise object type, either through knowledge of an inherited interface type or by direct sampling of the set of functions the object understands.
Here is my corresponding definition of REST Programming
REST Programming divides application state into resources. Each resource understands a set of representations of the state it selects, and a standard set of methods that can be used to access and manipulate its state using those representations. The representation types themselves are selected from a constrained set.
All resources have similar functions, and in pure REST all have similar representation types (content types). This means that all resources can be accessed without knowing the precise resource type.
Object-Orientation defines different types for different objects, and must then consider mechanisms such as introspection to discover type information and interact with an unknown object. REST defines one type for all objects. The one type is used regardless of application, industry or industry sector, or other differentiating factor. The goal of the uniform interface is that no client-side code needs to be written to support any particular new application or application type. They are accessed through the existing uniform interface using existing tools.
In this pure model, a single browser program can access banking sites or sports results. It can access search engines, or browse message group archives. The principle is that information is pushed around in forms that everyone understands. No new methods are required to access or manipulate the information. No new content types are introduced to deal with new data.
Benjamin