I don't think your pedantic coworker's criticism is unreasonable at all. APIs, HTTP or otherwise, should communicate what they actually do as best as possible. I have no idea what "blue" is supposed to mean in context, and I struggled to connect "blue" to "car."

What the article is saying, and what I think GP is saying, is that trying to model (non-CRUD) actions as "resources" in the pursuit of being "correct REST" is often a waste of time. `/nouns/8000/verb` is somewhat obvious to me (it does `verb` to `noun` 8000) despite not being "proper REST" whereas `/verb/8000` doesn't (what exactly am I `verb`'ing?), `/green/8000` would just make me scratch my head, and `/9f27410725ab8cc8854a2769c7a516b8/8000` tells me I'm wasting my time with this API and should go do something else.

As a user or developer I think being obvious and usable is more important than being "correct REST" and so I don't even use the term anymore, I just say HTTP API.

You might think it is just "pedantry" or "semantics" but consider that you are not the only one who will be using or reading these APIs, and design accordingly.

(However, if your coworker really was jumping up and screaming loudly at you because of this, this suggests he may not be as enjoyable to work with as you think)