The backend (i.e. Rails) still does almost everything it used to do: validations, access control, session management, data crunching, and everything else that you can't blindly trust a client to do. The real difference with client-side applications is that instead of stitching together view templates and sending back HTML documents, JSON objects are sent back for the client to represent.
More (sometimes duplicate) stuff is added to the client - things like client-side validations, and all the business logic and template code for the purposes of presentation. But no one in their right mind would let their backend blindly consume whatever it gets and persist it without question.
There's still plenty of responsibility for the backend.
Nowhere was this implied. The article says that Rails makes excellent RESTful APIs. Of course your API should do validations, access control, etc. But, Rails doesn't have to do (much) of the HTML given client-side MVC/MVVM libraries like Backbone and KnockoutJS.
Leave the rendering of the app to the client. Leave the ins and outs of the data to the API (driven by Rails, Node/Express/Railway, Django, what-have-you).
That's definitely applicable to mobile and web apps.
Right. I guess what I meant is that the backend is still responsible for everything it's always done except for generating HTML views. The rest still applies.
So, tell me again why we should be using HyperText Transfer Protocol for doing something that has nothing to do with transferring hypertext?
It would make more sense just to pipe JSON through IRC since it's much less verbose and was designed to be symmetrical (and session based) from the start.
The backend (i.e. Rails) still does almost everything it used to do: validations, access control, session management, data crunching, and everything else that you can't blindly trust a client to do. The real difference with client-side applications is that instead of stitching together view templates and sending back HTML documents, JSON objects are sent back for the client to represent.
More (sometimes duplicate) stuff is added to the client - things like client-side validations, and all the business logic and template code for the purposes of presentation. But no one in their right mind would let their backend blindly consume whatever it gets and persist it without question.
There's still plenty of responsibility for the backend.