Who is Roy Fielding?
He helped write the first web servers, that sent documents across the internet… and then he did a ton of research explaining why the web works the way it does. His name is on the specification for the protocol that is used to get pages from servers to your browser
Why don’t the techniques that we use today work well when we need to be able to talk to all of the machines in the world?
Because they weren't designed to be used like that. When Fielding and his colleagues started building the web, being able to talk to any machine anywhere in the world was a primary concern. But most of the techniques developers later used to get computers to talk to each other didn't have those requirements. You just needed to talk to a small group of machines.
What is the HTTP protocol that Fielding and his friends created?
HTTp is all about applying verbs to nouns. For instance, when you go to a web page, the browser does an HTTP GET on the URL you typed in and back comes a web page.
What does a GET do?
Especially when you're using a web browser because browsers pretty much just GET stuff. They don't do a lot of other types of interaction with resources. This is a problem because it has led many people to assume that HTTP is just for GET'ing. But HTTP is actually a general purpose protocol for applying verbs to nouns.
What does a POST do?
If one system needs to add something to another system, it would use an HTTP verb of POST
What does PUT do?
If a system wants to replace something in another system, it uses an HTTP verb of PUT, or, to do a partial update, it'll hopefully use PATCH
What does PATCH do?*
to do a partial update, it'll hopefully use PATCH