You need to learn how to manage your boss. This means understanding his personality and working with it. He sounds like a no nonsense talk is cheap type of personality. He hired you to be a programmer and replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET soluttion. He did not hire you to ask a lot of questions. If he wanted to pay someone to ask lots of questions he would have hired his worthless son-in-law. You need to tell him what you are going to do. For example I would state "The first screen is going to do this!" He might reply "That's BS! It has to work like this." and the conversation is started. IMHO I think you really should feel fortunate. Your boss is saying you are the expert programmer and he is willing to give you control. If you tell him what you are going to do instead of asking him what you should be doing things should get better. He will let you know when he does not like what you are telling him. Later in your career you may have a boss that wants to participate in all the decisions and will love that you ask them everything.

As a golf nut my goals at the beginning of each round are the same. No swearing and no club throwing. If I accomplish those two goals I have played well.

I think the size of the group is the determining factor. I manage a software development group that has 25 members. I started as a hardware guy, became a programmer and eventually moved to management. Being a good programmer will no longer advance my career. But being a better programmer and having new programming opportunities are essential to the careers of the other members of the group. Every time I code, make architectural or design decisions I am taking opportunities away from my staff. I have to trust that they will make the correct decision and will not be afraid to say they made a mistake and correct it. If experience shows me that I cannot trust their decisions then I need to remove them from the group. Sometimes it is like teaching your teenage child to drive. Very scary. But when you get good programmers who are not afraid to make decisions and implement them when and where they need to be made the results can be magical.