>>Would you like me to list the myriad of capabilities in SQL Server (or the combination of .NET and SQL) that can't be done in VFP?
My point was that Joe/Jane End User couldn't care a hoot about our cleverness or intellectual self-satisfaction along the way to deliver the actual thing that they use. Ask somebody what the Expedia app is written or how many exquisitely clever SP it uses: don't know, don't care as long as it's responsive, meaning the screen isn't so dissimilar from a database app from last century.
>>But this idea that the software world was all harmonious on the gender side until big bad male wolves came along and caused the gender conflicts by creating more complicated products....well, have to admit, it makes for a nice Hollywood movie, but I think the real story is a bit different.
That's your version. ;-) My version was that in those heady days, People were busy being amazed and doing really cool stuff for the first time. People. And it's true that since then, the people who lost sight of the user and began to focus on IT as a source of intellectual self-indulgence and extravagant revenues for themselves, are mostly men.
"... 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