I have developed since 1987. basic, Dbase, paradox, Vb,VBA. been Novell certified, worked on CTOS systems, Concurrent DOS systems, PC-MOS, LANMAN, built arcnet networks, sql server, asp,vbscript, cobol, and even worked as a fulltime employee for Microsoft Corporation starting off as a support engineer for Access and Visual Basic and leaving after transferring to Microsoft Learns division as an internal trainer for Access and VBA. Got a hand signed letter of recognition from Steve Balmer himself for an HR sexual hrassment DB i wrote for our site. And this is how i see it as well (true story here)
In the early and mid 90's i had a client (a grocery produce supplier) that I installed a 5 user system with a server of 330 mb for $28,000.00 Woek stations were 286 -16's and the entire business was run on a Solomon database I customized for him. he had 15 employees , about 50 to 60 clients and did about 4 million a year. His data was text - his invoices were triplicate doen on a dot matrix with a 4 page per minute laser for the fancy stuff. I talked him about 3 months ago -had not spoke to him for 17 years!
he has 11 employees, 52 customers - did about 3.6 million last year. He now has sql server that houses a $35,000.00 custom database , and pays a system admin about 65K a year to make sure it stays running. His workstations are dells with 500 gb drives and 8 gb memory - everyone has lasers and invoices now just print the same thing 3 times (no triplicate forms) His business hs not changed ONE bit to justify this technololgy. It is the evil empire of Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Dell and their marketing machines , not to mention gaming that has driven us where we are. How sad we have become. And although the PC has lowered the cost of most everything - the field that has benefitted the most - has more than increased it's costs 10 times and that field is medicine - go figure.