I think PaaS's are a pretty natural next-step on the evolution of hosting which is a lot more specific and smaller in scope than "programming" - the stuff they

I think PaaS's are a pretty natural next-step on the evolution of hosting which is a lot more specific and smaller in scope than "programming" - the stuff they abtract away from you is for the most part just a timesink and chore that has between negative (salaries & exploits & downtime) and limited (bang for your buck, ram, disk io) benefit to do yourself. Parse takes that model another step forward and just addresses the most common use case - CRUD applications that an experienced developer could create in their sleep but haven't we done that enough times already? There will still be occasion when your own server/s are the best or only option but fewer than today's developers want to admit.