Thanks for this! You are quite right. For the space that is dominated by "CRUD" apps there are quite a lot of alternative implementation pathways than pure coding.
And as most of the business value lives between the UI and the database, I understand why there is no driving incentive to create similar high quality tools for numerical, data intensive programming tasks that run on the customers desktop. We work in a niche, hence must be self sufficient.
IMHO, the business value lies in the data and the way they are structured. The user interface is important to the users, but the data are what make the business run longer than its users. Basically, without the data you can't provide the service; or worse, with bad quality data, you can't provide a good service.
I've spent (in bizdev, e-gov) tons of time figuring out badly structured data, fixing data quality issues, handling tons of administrative tasks to access sensitive data, etc.
I think it's up to a point where the structure of the databases actually influence the structure of the government. That's because nowadays, the databases and the business rules they embody are so complex that even the civil servants tend to forget how they work.
Sounds like a version of Conway's Law: "Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure."
The assumption was that the communications structure would come first and then the design would imitate it, but with really ossified hard-to-change systems it seems plausible that the departmental organization would shape around it.
> but the data are what make the business run longer than its users.
How often is that the case these days, though? Currently, when I subscribe to a service or buy a product tied to a service, I feel there's a 50/50 chance the company will shut down the service (or itself) while I'm still using it.
And as most of the business value lives between the UI and the database, I understand why there is no driving incentive to create similar high quality tools for numerical, data intensive programming tasks that run on the customers desktop. We work in a niche, hence must be self sufficient.