Writing a CRUD app with business logic sounds more complicated.
The tough part is extracting the business logic and correctly mapping this to code. If done well, this will create more value to the business than a drag-and-drop framework.
The tough part is extracting the business logic and correctly mapping this to code. If done well, this will create more value to the business than a drag-and-drop framework.
"We're middle-men (and women), glorified translators, and we're in the unbelievably fortunate position that programming computers is still much too hard for the average user of those computers, so we translate wishes and domain knowledge into a mental representation of machinery that performs some useful task."
The business logic is "the hard part" only in terms of client communication and project management, and then only barely.
Learning that "an Account Rep has Clients", and then modelling and implementing that, is ... not challenging? Three lines of ActiveRecord ('Duplo')?
They both vary tremendously depending on the problem, but on the whole, 'javascript widgets' trumps 'business logic' hands down. The fact that most business logic is simple is why you can glue things together so fast in Rails.
Olark's whole business is making a single javascript widget, and last I checked, they're still hiring.
Making things behave as expected in as heterogenous environment as the browser can be enormously complex as the sophistication and scope of the UI you present the user grows.
IMO, making that software to handle the business processes IS way more valuable to the business than a drag and drop widget framework. Especially if you execute it well, it can make the business hum.
PS: Yes, copy and paste is easy, and yes it looks like work, but it's rarely the correct solution.
But I agree with you if you're going in with a blank slate.
Yeah, but it's the part that most customers actually want. They pay for that, not for javascript widgets. A lot of customers are incredibly happy with basic, predictable interfaces, as long as they perform all the necessary "magic" calculations in the background, quickly and reliably.
So many developers waste their time chasing "the shiny", but most of the money is actually elsewhere.
And to answer the original question, yes it was complex, but that was 5 years ago. People didn't really know how to build complex solutions in javascript and there were no working examples you could just copy, paste and modify.
You were also very restricted by the speed that IE6 ran javascript on old computers.
If you believe this then perhaps you have never developed anything complicated at all.
"The fact that most business logic is simple is why you can glue things together so fast in Rails."
If it is this simple one must question why the work is done by a developer at all. Why are users not using some sort of web-based MS Access?