I think that&#x27;s a valid point but it only explains a small fraction of the ugliness of enterprise software. It explains why it tends to trend a bit behind, but it does not explain why you need 2gb of RAM to run a web application server or why you need ten pages of XML vomit to add a record to a database. Those kinds of things smack of over-engineering (usually via premature generalization and &quot;architecture astronautism&quot;) and cargo cultism among other things. When I look at those systems and code bases I always just sit there and ask &quot;what problem does this solve? what problem does this solve? what problem does this solve?&quot;<p>I also didn&#x27;t mean to imply that there are no good developers in &quot;enterprise.&quot; But I do believe that &quot;enterprise&quot; is to good developers what, say, a corrupt economy is to good entrepreneurs. You can operate there but it&#x27;s painful and everything about it gets in the way of doing the right thing.<p>Also also (heh) I didn&#x27;t mean to imply that all enterprises are &quot;enterprise.&quot; That&#x27;s why I put it in quotes. Some large organizations manage to avoid these pathologies. I&#x27;ve even seen really excellent systems emerge from government labs if the people running them are clueful. &quot;Enterprise&quot; in quotes refers to the pathologies that afflict big over-priced over-engineered slow clunky UX abominations. Everyone&#x27;s seen them and everyone&#x27;s been forced to use them... forced because nobody would <i>ever</i> voluntarily do so.