>if you were using a desktop GUI toolkit, you would almost certainly assume that there's essentially zero cost (or almost neglible cost) to the communication between the data (model) and the GUI
Which is true, because model is what you’re working with and binding to (along with a controller). You can populate your models from a roundtrip data source, if it is not local. How is that different from web apps?
I think this is the good old “ancients were less smart” stereotype. Client-server and 3-tier apps didn’t begin with web. Heck, even lan latency/throughput/cpuclock were comparable to what modern internet timings impose.
Some of what you've said here strikes me as true, as long as you limit the domain to "applications" aka "database client-server front end foobars".
It's really not true for any desktops in the "creation" realms that I mentioned. The data model for an image manipulation program or a spreadsheet or a DAW or a document preparation system is fundamentally in memory, and there's no roundtrip to anywhere to access it or to modify it.
I suspect I’m repeatedly misreading this subthread then. My point is that web apps are still apps, no matter whether app data came from http or fs or sql. It is unclear why good old methods of slapping data controls together wouldn’t work and why is it so hard and esoteric to do fullstack today and learning curves are so steep even for a simple crud++ area.
Which is true, because model is what you’re working with and binding to (along with a controller). You can populate your models from a roundtrip data source, if it is not local. How is that different from web apps?
I think this is the good old “ancients were less smart” stereotype. Client-server and 3-tier apps didn’t begin with web. Heck, even lan latency/throughput/cpuclock were comparable to what modern internet timings impose.