re: The days of the independent one man operations are quickly fading....


I don't think so. There are many companies out there that can't afford what programming shops charge. If the system is the right size (ie. not too big), I think one man is the way to go (of course, I think a well-documented systems manual is a good idea in this case too...just in case the 'one man' decides he wants to pick-up and leave, or whatever). I have worked in a three-man development team...we could take-on bigger projects than we could as individuals...but we also now had to have an office where we could all work (as opposed to our own home-office)...this meant an hour a day of travel time that could have been coding time...it meant overhead expenses (which we passed-on to the client)...

There are still plenty of opportunities out there for the one man operation. I am not in the consulting business at this time, but I would not hesitate to go after business 'on my own' if things changed.

The bottom line is that businesses still need what they've always needed. Programs to process and store their information, and to create reports of the information, etc. Not too many business people really care about what is cool in their program (not what programmer would call cool)...what is cool to them is making money and not spending too much to get there.