I wrote about why linking is useful recently https://www.daniellittle.dev/practical-hypermedia-controls. I've been using Hypermedia in my APIs for a few years now and it's been so useful for making great APIs. One of the things I really love about it is that you can test/use the API directly much more easily, because the knowledge about how to use it is in the API itself, instead of half hardcoded into the client.
The article goes through a series of examples to show motivations for the following:
1. Variables should not be allowed to change their type.
2. Objects containing the same values should be equal by default.
3. Comparing objects of different types is a compile-time error.
4. Objects must always be initialized to a valid state. Not doing so is a compile-time error.
5. Once created, objects and collections must be immutable.
6. No nulls allowed.
7. Missing data or errors must be made explicit in the function signature.
The idea being that each feature or constraint _enables_ you to reason and predict more about a program than you could otherwise.
I encourage anyone interested in these ideas to play around with F# or a similar language and get a feeling for how they influence your code. If you've mastered one paradigm such as OO one of the best ways to find holes in your mental models is to try and find another point of view to look at the same problems. Even if you keep writing most of your code like you do today, in the language you do today, it can still be beneficial.