>>Speaking of which: in the last few days I had to set up a web service which would ship simple JSON messages back and forth. I looked at all the alternatives, and wrote the crux of the server in (exactly) 16 lines of Python (using CherryPy), including configuation settings.
That's what technology is supposed to do and it's normal in other fields. Imagine if the Da Vinci robot made surgery more difficult and complicated: only the worst surgeons would use it. Whereas in IT some people who are regarded as experts seem to take gleeful pride in convoluted and obfuscatory practices that they call modern.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1