>>Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Or as Paula Cole would ask, "Where have all the Cowboys gone?" ;-)
>>What you're missing, JR, is not a 4GL, but a common platform, like Windows or DOS.
Actually, it's the browser, but it's so kludgy that we can't accept it as the norm.
Not a common platform! Give me a roading network comprised of as many surfaces as you please as long as they're accessible to my vehicle. I want a common vehicle, not a common platform. Charge me tolls if your road carries benefits worth paying for. But allow my vehicle to make it to the supermarket without having to involve cranes, bungy jumps, tightropes, armored cars and heaps of other malarkey because somebody else decided that Heath Robinson is the best! ;-)
"... 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