Hello Kevin, charming as ever. ;-)

Yup, I'm a real catch - you should see me in a sweater. :)

Sounds terrible, but surely that's an organization/management failure including IT?

It's a management failure, which was sort of my point. And I got a little secret for you (come closer, I don't want the word to get out)....management sometimes gives orders to I.T. But it's just our little secret. So shhhhhh...... :)


On Google App inventor, I'll acknowledge I haven't used it, but I've looked at some of the apps that have been created with it. OK, they're moderately cool, but not very interesting - so you'll have to forgive me for a cynical view that these tools suffer from being almost insufferably pedantic and their results rather linear.

Regarding Kittyhawk, I'll dig deeper into my increasingly curmudgeon viewpoint - it's like Linq to SQL all over again. Want to write SQL? Write SQL. Want to generate .NET apps? Learn to use .NET. Whether one is a programmer or a "power Excel user", the process of pulling one's hair out a few times prior to the "eureka" moment is needed for the inevitable moment when one hits the wall with these "user-created" tools. It's just like Frank Herbert said: "There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop muscles"

There's nothing new under the sun here. I'm old enough to remember the application called Genifer from the late 1980's. It generated data maintenance forms for xBase environments. It produced some OK results - but typically the user/bz requirements called for some elbow grease that only a programmer could actually provide.

My reactions aren't rooted in a secret fear of being "democratized", "marginalized", "commoditized" (is that a word?) - I'm just a bit surprised that you seem to be buying into this.