35 years ago I was getting into coding for the first time on Commodore Pets and ZX81. I read about The Last One [1] in the computing press in 1981 and thought t

35 years ago I was getting into coding for the first time on Commodore Pets and ZX81. I read about The Last One [1] in the computing press in 1981 and thought that maybe the world won't need programmers. Well, the world needs programmers more than ever, since demand for software is only increasing. It's nice to hear that the dream of user generated systems is still alive. We've had many iterations, from the The Last One, through Hypercard, Fabrik, Scratch. It's a powerful vision, which is why people keep chasing it. But it can only address well defined niches. Of course we have had a very powerful end user software authoring system for some time. It uses a visual, grid based, functional programming system and has powerful database and charting features. It's called Excel. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1293278/what-became-of-the-last-one http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1293278/what-became-of-th...