Circa 2008 I built an internal web framework (based on Django) with the goal of defining everything as server-side models; the client/presentation layer was der

Circa 2008 I built an internal web framework (based on Django) with the goal of defining everything as server-side models; the client/presentation layer was derived entirely from the model description. Zero front end programming. A couple of notes: - It works, technically. This ain't new. CRUD UIs can and have been totally automated. It was well within any competent programmer's grasp 20+ years ago. - It doesn't work from a business perspective. Everything looks stock, generic. No branding. No UI clues to guide behavior. Business objects felt siloed, their relationships unclear. You might as well manage your data in a spreadsheet. Ultimately, the UI needs turn out not to be a straight reflection of the data model. Every single project required additional judgements, joins, aesthetics, branding, custom workflows, etc. Thus every project eventually ditched the auto-UI and built a SPA-style javascript app against the REST API. In short, generating a UI from a data model is an old idea. The reason we don't use it today is that it sucks.