This is absolutely true. The magical "write a model, get an app" approach is so tempting. But it's focusing on the wrong problem - optimizing for the initial tutorial experience, not the lifecycle of a production app.
That initial scaffolding takes, what, an hour or two? Getting that down to a minute or two is not a high priority, considering 99.9% of the lifecycle of the app is dominated afterwards by what that structure allows. Coding yourself into a corner on purpose, just to save a few minutes on launch, is a strange tradeoff.
I know because I've made that tradeoff dozens of times and cursed myself every time. I built a web framework that did auto UI based on Django models, postgres and jquery. It was active 2010-2014 and I built dozens of production apps with it. That initial "wow" factor of going from a model in your head to a full user interface is very compelling! I did live demos with clients where we'd code up a model and launch a site in real time. Cool, right! The problem was the structure only fit certain types of applications and as we stretched it into adjacent domains, we had to break it down and effectively "eject" from the framework, making each instance a custom app - which is what we should have started anyways.
Hi perrygeo, Manifest dev here, I totally agree with you: quick starts can be harmful in the middle/long term so most of the times I would probably accept to invest more time in the beginning building something flexible.
However, you are talking here as a senior/expert developer - as you were already coding in 2010 ;) - but junior devs OR frontend devs may not be able to create that Django+DB+API app so easily. That is an important point to consider.
If it's there as an option it means eventually it will be used and there's usually no easy way to go back...
The unsettling part is wondering if you made the right choice at that point which usually is a non-problem but the point of a framework is to establish convention and order.
That initial scaffolding takes, what, an hour or two? Getting that down to a minute or two is not a high priority, considering 99.9% of the lifecycle of the app is dominated afterwards by what that structure allows. Coding yourself into a corner on purpose, just to save a few minutes on launch, is a strange tradeoff.
I know because I've made that tradeoff dozens of times and cursed myself every time. I built a web framework that did auto UI based on Django models, postgres and jquery. It was active 2010-2014 and I built dozens of production apps with it. That initial "wow" factor of going from a model in your head to a full user interface is very compelling! I did live demos with clients where we'd code up a model and launch a site in real time. Cool, right! The problem was the structure only fit certain types of applications and as we stretched it into adjacent domains, we had to break it down and effectively "eject" from the framework, making each instance a custom app - which is what we should have started anyways.