The world might be gaga over GraphQL, but it is still running on REST. In fact, Kubernetes is mostly a monstrous REST API and as I was recently reminded, a k8s “Service” is a “REST” object:
A Service in Kubernetes is a REST object, similar to a Pod. Like all of the REST objects, you can POST a Service definition to the API server to create a new instance. The name of a Service object must be a valid DNS label name.
Given the substantial momentum of all things cloud-native it is safe to say that mastering the methods and means to creating, managing, and consuming REST APIs is a solidly career requirement for most people working in tech for the foreseeable future. In fact, it wasn’t until I started looking at the Kubernetes REST API to find an associated method to match it that I discovered Swagger, which had me feeling like I was late to the party, again. Swagger has good and bad stuff like most tech, but it makes short work of code generation for otherwise extremely complicated REST APIs, both for the clients and the micro-services providing them.
Bottom line: learn REST and all the tools that go with it, yes including Swagger, curl, httpie, PostMan, and yes, learn GraphQL as well.