>>I think we're solving very different problems today than the ones we solved back in the in the late 90's and even longer ago. Distributed systems involve a lot more complexity. Different platforms that have completely different development platforms are lot more complex. Different screen sizes, different features on mobile devices - trying to build a one size fits all application seems futile to me at least if you try to do it 'natively'.
>>What we need to support is much, much more complex than what we build 20-30 years ago, it's that simple. We couldn't build the kind of stuff we're building today with relative ease, not unless you learned C and assembler and started digging into OS Apis.

Certainly WE are doing different stuff. But are the customers doing different stuff? In the end and apart from obvious connectivity and UI improvements: for the user, is a Metro app today so different from a TRS-80 app in the 1980s? For the user, is a super-clever app done using Flavor du Jour that different from something written in FP2.0?

IMHO Dr Dave had it right all those years ago: express forms and reports as metadata that can be rendered on any device, then package with a 4GL and IL interpreter so it can be run anywhere. Yeah I know this was "discovered" for the Browser more recently, but only as part of an exciting fruit salad of development.

Re extra difficulty from screen resolution etc: not my experience. Products like Joomla can insulate developers almost completely as long as you adhere to its framework. Seems to me we need to go back to encapsulation: sure it's interesting to dig into the innards, but that should be a hobby rather than a necessary part of development IMHO.