New programmers, take note: this is important, but it's unlikely that people will tell you it! In programming, when something is branded as "easy", "simple", or "lightweight", it frequently (not always, but frequently) means that it's confusing and complicated!

SOAP (along with WSDL, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Se…), was supposed to fix everything. They like what "blockchain" is now: tons of money being dumped in, big players getting on board, etc. They were utter boondoggles of complexity that we've mostly forgotten, probably at our own peril!

No one names a thing COAP, the Complicated Object Access Protocol. There's a built-in marketing valence to names. Claims about simplicity/ease/etc. must be discounted. But it's hard because when (e.g.) Rich Hickey says "simple" he has a specific, coherent definition and means it!