What is the different between RESTful and RESTless

REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer and goes a little something like this:

We have a bunch of uniquely addressable 'entities' that we want made available via a web application. Those entities each have some identifier and can be accessed in various formats. REST defines a bunch of stuff about what GET, POST, etc mean for these purposes.

the basic idea with REST is that you can attach a bunch of 'renderers' to different entities so that they can be available in different formats easily using the same HTTP verbs and url formats.

For more clarification on what RESTful means and how it is used google rails. Rails is a RESTful framework so there's loads of good information available in its docs and associated blog posts. Worth a read even if you arent keen to use the framework. For example: http://www.sitepoint.com/restful-rails-part-i/

RESTless means not restful. If you have a web app that does not adhere to RESTful principles then it is not RESTful

'RESTless' is a term not often used.

You can define 'RESTless' as any system that is not RESTful. For that it is enough to not have one characteristic that is required for a RESTful system.

Most systems are RESTless by this definition because they don't implement HATEOAS.