Nowadays kids seem just to do JavaScript/Python/Ruby frameworks for generating web pages. That's progress, IMHO. Instead of distributing application binaries

Nowadays kids seem just to do JavaScript/Python/Ruby frameworks for generating web pages. That's progress, IMHO. Instead of distributing application binaries carefully targeted to each type of user machine, we only have to run the application on one server machine (or a cluster of them) in a central location and can serve the application over the network. We now have code-generating frameworks that help automate away much of the tedious, repetitive parts of implementing an application. It's not a good thing that software development is hard. It does mean that you're a very smart and hard-working person if you're able to do it effectively. But it's not a good thing for society that you need to be so smart and hard-working in order to do it. It is, however, a good thing that it's not as hard as it used to be. The fact that a software developer has to do and know less today than they did 20-30 years ago, just to build an application and distribute it to a large number of users, is a sign of progress.