I get what you are saying but even to get that you had to (manually) define your model and it's fields and relations and that is only the most basic thing you c

I get what you are saying but even to get that you had to (manually) define your model and it's fields and relations and that is only the most basic thing you can ask of an api, but how about the following tasks: requesting a subset of objects using a few filters, requesting only specific properties of objects, specifying what users can and can not access info about those objects, making sure garbage does not get into the database (input validation). All these things have to be manually solved by you in your controllers, there is no scaffolding for that, while in Sub0 all those things are already solved, most of what you have to do is define your database schema and the rest just works. As an example in terms of time invested (based on specific personal experience): To build an api the way you describe for a product like Basecamp it will take a good developer at least a few months. With sub0 we are talking 1-2 weeks.