One does not have to be a pro developer to make a lot of money

I've encountered code related to the [SomeAccountingAppName] accounting software on a couple of occasions. Every time I did not like it, as well as the API or the internals of [SomeAccountingAppName] itself.

Popular accounting software in Russia shares the same features in giving you the shrugs.

Curiously enough, developers, specializing in such software (integrating with it, writing scripts in some internal language, crafting reports or data entry forms) are always in demand and have wages way above the average.

This reminds of one flaming discussion on the DevExpress forum about the reusable domain models in XAF framework back in March of 2008.

It was a lot of fun to make a point that complex long-living system built with some "Create your enterprise app in 30 minutes" toolkit will be unbearable to maintain and develop in the long term. Especially if such an application has extremely tight coupling, no IoC/DI and no clear separation of concerns.

However, there was one argument on the opposite side that did make a perfect short-term sense from the economical point of view.

I don't know what you're complaining about with XAF/XPO. It seems to me that you are trying to be purists, who follow the latest ideas about architecture, which is fine in its own regard, but for the rest of us who have a job to complete do not have the luxury of coding philosophy and prefer, rather, to provide solutions for our paying customers. So, while you're trying to build the eiffel tower with code, I'm out providing my customers solutions built on XAF/XPO and getting paid handsomely to do so. So far, in 2008 alone, I've completed 7 implementations with XAF totalling a little over $32,000 in billing. And, I'm a one-man show. Not bad considering my overhead during that same period was less than $6,000. So, DX, XAF, & XPO has helped net $24,000 in two months. Try pulling that off with any other development suite of tools. I've been a developer for 10 years and I've never been able to be so productive without having a team around me. Once I build a team in my new location, we'll continue to use DX tools and the money will keep rolling in because we can finally produce high quality apps in a short amount of time.

Nice argument. And easy one to try out for yourself, if you feel like creating solutions that hurt to watch from long-term economical and development points of view.