Well, you could, but you're still limited to the capabilities of Steem itself.
Steem itself doesn't actually have a smart contract layer - so you can't write consensus based logic. It's primarily a content (posts) store with voting mechanisms to surface content.
Currently the platform has ballooned as well, and this article is severely out of data. To run a "full node" on the network now requires something like 270GB of RAM, which can be trimmed down slightly by using some of the filtering options. For example, I built a forum interface on top of Steem (chainbb.com, and the Steem API node behind that is currently sitting at 54GB of RAM.
steem-python and steem-js are the two primarily libraries that most people use at this time to interact with the chain, both available under https://github.com/steemit.
We have a discord chat running for steem developers, if you're interested in chatting/asking more questions, feel free to join!
Hi @jesta my witness
Steemian all
Previously I apologize if commented, because it does not match the topic. But I am sure you are a good and caring person, I am very sure you are too great person of course, I am very motivated with you @jesta
You love to travel, on the way you meet abandoned children, I am sure you are a caring, loving and loving person that children can smile at children, it will be nice even though the valentine moment has passed. I am sure you will want to be discouraged, if you do not mind visit my bloq, i hope you can give input to my writing and direct me @jesta
Thanks you so much
Give a little smile (Save the children)