Why REST? Or "Simple vs. Easy"

This is a post that I want to write for years and cannot find the correct words. I'm fully aware that hundreds of blog posts have already fully covered this subject and still I want to write my opinion in my blog. It is my blog after all, right?

So "Why REST?"
But first, I'd like to say two words. One is "simple" and the second one is "easy". Although these words sound like synonyms, actually they are not. Some simple things can be not easy. And some easy things can be not simple.
For example: breathing is easy for most people, you don't need to think about it. But is it simple? Can you make someone breathe, if he doesn't?
On contrary cleaning an apartment is simple. But is it easy? Not for me at least...

The key point here is that simple things just work. They may not be easy to achieve, but once you do it, they work. Once you clean an apartment, you have a clean apartment. For a while at least.
But when something is not simple, its quite problematic even to understand how it should work. Sometimes it's easy to start (breathe for example), but what happen if something goes wrong (stop breathe for example)?

And now back to REST.
REST is simple. Not easy, but simple. Correct RESTful APIs are very clear, very simple to understand. They may not be easy to implement, but once implemented they work. It's quite easy to troubleshoot the RESTful APIs, you can do with with a simple HTTP Proxy (e.g. Fiddler). It ensures quite a decoupling between server and client.
Yes it takes time to develop a RESTful API. Yes there is no much automation around and suddenly a developer needs to develop a layer that he got generated with SOAP.

And now to SOAP (and other APIs that are generated from wslds/custom xmls/whatever): this one is easy. Usually I can get some working API very fast. There are a lot of tools that help you. BUT, it is not simple: the tools generate a lot of code that you don't know and sometimes not very readable. The integrations become very complex (did you ever install ESB?) The versioning becomes a nightmare. And the standards don't work very well (did you ever tried to integrate Java to .NET using some complex types?)

So the bottom line is: REST is simple, but not easy. SOAP is easy at the beginning, but not simple.
Simple is good, specially if you continue keeping it simple.
And forget about easy. Nobody said that a software development should be easy.