Eliminating boilerplate codes for web applications. Is it rocket science?

Question

Year 2010 and we still have to write boilerplate codes. Lets assume we are building an online application (it doesnt matter wherter it is fancy or not but a funtional one). We first make database design and put some business logic on it (stored procedures, unique or not etc) then we code server side and write most of the business logic on client side ( actionscript-ajax, flex). Using ORM helps to eliminate database part. However for gui part we have to know too much xhtml, css, javascript/ajax (heey I am programmer I dont have to know these ie6 tricks). We still have to reimplement some business logic on the client side (especially for flex applications). Django admin is good but changing how it looks (layout dont care too much about colors) is not easy. Do you feel that there is something wrong here? It doesnt look like a rocket science but we still have to write boilerplate codes. I have worked with a proprietary system which was quite good for doing web applications. We were just writing small scripts and voila application was ready. Developer team were trying to develope a gui front-end to further eliminate coding scripts with just using IDE. It was a small company and team was small.

So there are thousands of open source projects still I havent seen a similar project. I have only coded with Django and Spring frameworks.

• Does GWT help? I mean eliminating reimplementation of bussiness logic on both client side and server side (also database part). And easy to design GUIs with components.

• It seems that LCDS 3 will provide model-driven-development. But too expensive to use.

I dont really mean making fancy websites just making dammed web applications in a RAD way. Good IDE support for gui layout helps but not necessary xml will be fine. How do you feel about boilerplate web codes? Do you think making a RAD platform rocket science?

Answer 1

Ruby on Rails has very little boilerplate--and what it has it generates for you.

GWT is pretty cool as well, but it's more useful for active web sites where you have a lot of component interaction.

Edit:

I wonder why the downvote... Anyway Just wanted to add-- I worked in rails for a year, but I'm a java programmer at heart. Still now I can say having experienced both I'd personally never choose Ruby (or probably any dynamic language) for a large corporate app, and I don't think I'd ever use anything BUT ruby & rails (or a comparable like Grails) for a web app, the dynamic features eliminate nearly all the boilerplate, even database binding is free!

Answer 2

I like the play framework because it support RAD or whatever. You don't have to write a lot of boilerplate code.