But what is the value of a 200 OK when the request absolutely failed? As a caller, I don’t care that it successfully was conveyed but still utterly failed. Depending on my usage, I may only care about pass/ fail and the backend insisting I have to handle multiple different ways of expressing failure is just more work with no value.
Using 500 does nothing to preclude your application errors. If the caller wants nuance, it can still have it in the body or headers.
But what is the value of a 200 OK when the request absolutely failed? As a caller, I don’t care that it successfully was conveyed but still utterly failed. Depending on my usage, I may only care about pass/ fail and the backend insisting I have to handle multiple different ways of expressing failure is just more work with no value.
Using 500 does nothing to preclude your application errors. If the caller wants nuance, it can still have it in the body or headers.