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Ask HN: Why can't I visually create v1.0 of a CRUD application?

5 points by projectramo ↗ HN
One should be able to throw together the front end by dragging and dropping pieces on to a canvas.

One should then be able to drag and drop a UML like diagram to create all the models. When you hit save, the database, the model (rails/django/node) code, and the ORM all get generated.

One should be able to link the front end to the models.

The output should be rails/django/nodejs that you can modify.

Why isn't there something to get that first part out fast? I look at MS Access and how easy it was to write up a database and wonder why it does not exist.

4 comments

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beamatronic
I have been wondering the same thing lately. I'm not saying UML was the greatest thing ever but it was supposed to be a language- and implementation-independent way to model data relationships.
dragonwriter
> Why isn't there something to get that first part out fast?

Typing out models is faster than defining them by drag and drop. There's code generators that will produce basic CRUD apps from that (heck, that was one of the selling points of Rails early on.)

jasoncrawford
There are plenty of apps that are pretty close to what you're describing, basically MS Access for the web. They're usually called “app builders”. Knack, Zoho Creator, etc.

The real problem is that this way of creating 1.0 gives you no path to get to 2.0. Dietzler’s Law for Access:

“Every Access project will eventually fail because, while 80% of what the user wants is fast and easy to create, and the next 10% is possible with difficulty, ultimately the last 10% is impossible because you can’t get far enough underneath the built-in abstractions, and users always want 100% of what they want.”

From: http://nealford.com/memeagora/2013/01/22/why_everyone_eventu...