Another example is early implementations of Visual Studio GUI designer. It was much easier for them to produce this using a new magic code that we didn't have t

Another example is early implementations of Visual Studio GUI designer. It was much easier for them to produce this using a new magic code that we didn't have to interact with but which quickly became passe and required some understanding when debugging. Once they were able to produce forms using code, the old method just went away and everything changed again. I don't feel that we lack the tooling to be as slick as we want, we lack the motivation to invest the time and money to make things slicker. It worked at Apple, not because of integrated tooling, but because of a dictator-style management that forced people to collaborate in the name of quality. Perhaps what we are uncomfortable with is the idea that high quality requires that level of control!?