> As a result, the industry shifted to encouraging the use of "real" programming languages for everything, even the simplest systems, because the greater up-fro

> As a result, the industry shifted to encouraging the use of "real" programming languages for everything, even the simplest systems, because the greater up-front costs were saved many times over by having a sane story for long-term maintenance and improvement. That makes a certain amount of sense; I know I've sworn at insane Excel spreadsheets that have lived far longer than they should have. The thing I'd argue is that the vast majority of business tools are only useful for very few people for a very short period of time. Sometimes they are never useful. Doing those in a "real" language can have an ROI of centuries (or never), so just never get automated or tried. There's a very important place for cheap prototyping and if non-developers can do it that's even better.