[bjourne]

Good question. I firmly believe that beginning with the visual prototype is the right thing to do. That way it becomes much easier to hash out the requirements with the client (they always change) and let "what is it you want to accomplish?" questions decide how the system should be implemented.

Crappy programmers always start with the frontend first because they don't know anything better. Good programmers often start with the backend, and specifying a huge database schema. In my experience that invariably leads to a rigid system with way too many complicated relations and features no one need or asked for.

One concrete example I've seen a million times is someone making a feature for advanced access controls, privilege levels, user accounts, who can edit this, who can see this etc... And in the end it turns out all users are using the admin account anyway!