Actually, prior to REST, most developers didn't even know about PUT/DELETE/etc. which are key operators that RESTful services are supposed to exploit.
Most developers also have shockingly poor understandings of all kinds of aspects of the HTTP protocol (headers, which ones are important, semantics of the various verbs, pipelining, multipart MIME/server push/etc., they typically know at best a handful of error codes that make sense in a RESTful context...).
Actually, prior to REST, most developers didn't even know about PUT/DELETE/etc. which are key operators that RESTful services are supposed to exploit.
Most developers also have shockingly poor understandings of all kinds of aspects of the HTTP protocol (headers, which ones are important, semantics of the various verbs, pipelining, multipart MIME/server push/etc., they typically know at best a handful of error codes that make sense in a RESTful context...).