2 years ago, I had exactly the same question, especially for the internal tools (e.g. the admin interface). Some frameworks (like Loopback in Node.js) have the

2 years ago, I had exactly the same question, especially for the internal tools (e.g. the admin interface). Some frameworks (like Loopback in Node.js) have the ability to generate the CRUD API automatically based on your data schema. The downside is the way to customize it. IMHO, it's not "easy"/"developer-friendly" enough to convince me. Back to the admin interface topic, there're also many tools (ActiveAdmin, Django Admin, Sonata, etc.) that automatically generate the CRUD interface. It reduces a lot the maintenance, but one more time, customization is limited, DSLs are just ugly and they are not SPA :( I never understood why it's not simply based on an API. This is why I've started Forest Admin (https://www.forestadmin.com https://www.forestadmin.com). It's an open-source library you install into your app. It automatically generates the REST API based on your data models and it covers 90% of admin operations (CRUD, analytics, etc.) and let developers customize the logic (custom actions, computed fields, complex workflows, etc.) without learning a complex DSL. In addition, we also provide to business team a customizable UI as a SaaS.