I don't understand the significance of something like rails, codeigniter, etc. and scaffolding. From what I read, and maybe it's just wrong, scaffolding isn't used in the production environment. I don't know what it's for. It's neat but I don't know what I am supposed to do with it.
Thanks.
You use Scaffolding to get some results rapdily, for instance to quickly whip out an early protoype or to get functionality like CRUD in place. Usually the code generated through scaffolding is a crutch you have to replace or extend later with something more sophisticated.
So yes, you are right. It's a temporal solution, a stand-in, unless you get the real thing in place.
In that sense, scaffolding is a Technical Debt.
Scaffolding is there for you to "get started", with respect to the features and typical operations of the framework. That said, most of the time, the scaffolding has become outdated and just touches upon the basic features.
It's excellent to see how you're expected to use the application. I like to run a scaffold in a test application to get a look at how the default case is handled. Gordon is correct, however, that it does incur future maintenance time.