I think what you are missing in today's editorial comes only with age - old age that is...

You young folks missed the days when "software developer" meant you knew code, AND database. This is because back in the late 70's and early 80's systems like dBase, Rbase, QNE, and so many others were complete systems - that is they came with a programming language and (for lack of a better term) built-in databases. There was NO configuring SQL, no hassle bundling everything you needed, and no silliness where you had one coder, and one database guy.

Now, we have "advanced" (chuckle intended) to where no one person can whip up a small and successful app and launch it, and potentially build a company behind it. No, we need experts for everything. Where one guy used to be able to build, launch and support a networked application, we now need a team of guys to even get it installed. This is of course "progress".

Worse still, we now have ".NET" and today I still meet with potential clients who will say "It must be .NET..." and then I will ask them 'Do you know what .NET is?' and the answer, 99% of the time is "No, but I know I need it...". In the old days, people just wanted good, user-friendly working systems - now, they know they need something they don't even know the first thing about.

We used to have a market with dozens of development systems, now we have basically two or three and they are all overly complex and horribly splintered. No one person can manage what used to be so simple.

...and we call this progress. For me, looking over my decades in the business, its two steps forward, a hundred backwards as we layer complexity where simplicity would have done nicely.