Thin client paradigm characterized by web applications is a kludge that needs to be repudiated. Old compromises are no longer needed and it’s time to move the presentation tier to where it belongs.
In this article, Ganesh Prasad and Peter Svensson explains why this is the case, and what a modern approach looks like.
From the article:
However, let us be blunt about the impact of these frameworks. Although they bring order and rationality to server-side presentation logic, they only serve to perpetuate a kludge. There is low cohesion within the Presentation Tier, because presentation responsibilities have been split between browser and web server for extraneous reasons that have nothing to do with sound architecture. Simultaneously, there is tight coupling between presentation logic and business logic on the server side. Specifically, current web frameworks create the client on the server from several variants of server-side templates, configuration files, annotations and the like, which increases the complexity of building something that should have been straightforward. Today, not only are web frameworks no longer required, their acceptance as a natural component of every system hobbles us significantly in our effort to build applications better.
To dive in and see examples of a rational presentation tier, here is the full article.