REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for designing networked applications, where a client-server communication is stateless and each request from the client to server must contain all the information the server needs to fulfill that request. Alternatives include SOAP (more rigid, requires XML), [[GraphQL]] (more flexible, allows clients to request only the data they need), and gRPC (uses protocol buffers and HTTP/2 for better performance). [[Django]] encourages RESTful design through its built-in features, whereas [[React.js]] can consume [[RESTful APIs]] or alternatives to manage the front-end state, both essential in the modern web development landscape to ensure scalability, maintainability, and performance.