> With web apps, the code base is relatively small and simple Well said, this is having enormous impacts in the economy of web 2.0 too. Not just small, but als

> With web apps, the code base is relatively small and simple Well said, this is having enormous impacts in the economy of web 2.0 too. Not just small, but also simple as you said. This means that almost every decent programmer can write it, so most startups have success just for a matter of feeling, community, user interface and user experience in general. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing: from one side it is not very meritocratic as to be very smart with the code and design of complex systems is not the sole road to the success. On the other hand this is probably the first stage in the history where small groups of people that sometimes lack a strong programming background (in favor of other kind of background) are writing software used by a lot of users, this can be an interesting human experiment. Just a possibly stupid question: is it possible that the web 2.0 is subtracting hackers from more long-term important work because everybody is busy writing simple web apps instead of the next google or alike?