I have also been doing this for 30 years and I must respectfully take another position. In the VB 4-6, VC 4-6 ++ and pre-web Days I was a master of my craft. My tools were always comfortable to me; fit my hand and I only needed one help file once in a while to look up a bit syntax. I had complete confidence that if I accepted a project that I would finish with the customer pleased. Now the majority of project time is digging into how my tools work; when deployed here in this framework, under this hosted site or these security conditions or that this managed code library will… that web service is allowed to… in IIS but not under…looks like this in IE but not in Firefox and oh you use Chrome…and on and on and on. There may not BE a right solution, I cannot certain and I fear for my customer at times. If we can learn to code, yes, we can learn new code and ideas, the linked list, random file access, recordset, ODBC, OLDEB, Entity Model Framwork, LINQtoSQL, ODATA, ad infinitum (that’s just some of MS). We can adapt but should we be forced to? Is the vibe here if you suggest that maybe greater complexity for its own sake is bad that makes you a IT coward? Are we getting something special in exchanged for the treadmill of change that creates endlessly mediocrity of skills? At the end of the day I am still putting names, dates and values on the screen. Same as thirty years ago, but I have to read a damn lot of postings to it. Feel free to ascribe it to some lack on my part but then the hundreds of sites like this one would not exist cause it would just be my problem. We need to own up that the platforms are becoming / have become spaghetti code that change constantly to (a.) make a buck and (b.) fix last quarter’s almost good idea.