>Maybe... IMHO there's a more fundamental question about complexity. Loading a blunderbuss takes a great deal of skill before you dare fire that baby, but that doesn't make it the best firearm. ;-) So, if it is too complex for domain users to do their own stuff in 2010 compared to the 1980s when domain experts like Pat Adams not only wrote their own apps but became gurus in the new technologies as well, then who does that change serve and whose stupid idea was it? Quality is about standardizing and reducing complexity/variability, not about increasing complexity.

John - I think at least one piece to think about is that in the 1980s, there were a whole lot of people who were domain experts, but who had they been born 20 or 30 years later, might have gone into computing in the first place. That is, computing hadn't been an option for them.

Now we can argue about whether, in fact, the years of experience in a domain made them better programmers. (Actually, I'm not sure we can argue about it, since I think we'd agree that it did.)

But, to my mind, the question today is whether you'll find that same level of call it "computing aptitude" in domain experts, or whether we've successfully sorted most of the people with an aptitude for programming out of other fields already.

Tamar