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>More than 20 years after the invention of the IBM PC (and the Apple Macintosh, for that matter), why is it still so difficult to build robust applications?
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>Because it is an inherently difficult task. Otherwise, everyone could do it.

Progress has been made in lots of other "inherently difficult" fields - e.g. speech recognition. Why not in software development?

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>And FWIW, building robust apps is more a function of the developer than the specific toolset.

I agree, but the right tools can help a lot.

I suspect the best and brightest are focused on making scads of money solving problems for clients, using existing development methods, rather than working on improving the methods. There's probably more money in it.