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I think yes and no. For example, for public web application development the barrier is already low enough that you can put your entire company at risk pretty easily. I think there is little reverence for what it actually means to craft a proper web based application, and that it's not even all about the code, and then there's the never ending maintenance and administration of the server(s).

Now, if you're a spreadsheet jockey and you just need to gather and display your data in a non-trivial way, there are quite a number of things already out there. Business Objects (or whatever it's called now) and Tableau have basically formed large companies upon this idea and there's open source options like Jasper Reports.

I think the days of being able to slap some VB together and write a desktop application are just about completely dead in most situations, which means you really do need a vast breadth of knowledge that a weekend warrior developer didn't need to have a number of years ago.




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