The idea that tools are becoming so easy that more people can create applications is a familiar one. “Tools vendors for years have heralded an age when programming is a thing of the past and computing is effortless,” Neil McAllister writes in My kid could code that. Many such applications are lumped into the “cool stuff” pile that, some might say, there simply are not engineers to build because, McAllister’s words, “they’re all busy doing actual work.” Cool stuff is a great way to sell tools, but “let’s get real … three mashups, two RIAs (rich Internet applications), four RSS feeds, and a dashboard do not an enterprise application make.” Software Development