I have never understood why people adopted graphql.

Despite years of asking people to explain its use, any example cases given can always be resolved with regular old http/REST style apis.

You still have to write sql queries to back your graphql calls anyway, so why are we spending extra obfuscation and effort instead of just getting the work done.

Facebook has so corrupted the engineering environment over the years that if a company recruiter contacts me and I find they're using any FB tech other than React, it's an instant no. I've walked over that luau bbq pit enough. React only gets the pass because it's not specifically bad tech, and it's too ubiquitous.