I can give my personal take on working as a software developer in St. Louis. Ten years ago, it was pretty hard to find cutting-edge work. Developers here usually went to work writing code for Boeing or AT&T or Edward Jones, etc. (I worked for AT&T.)

But that's an outdated view of the world.

I now work for a medium-sized software company. I have multiple friends here who work at little web/mobile consultancies. There is even a smallish startup scene and an incubator [0].

Obviously, it's not on the scale of New York or Boston or SF, but it's large enough to render your comment absurd.

[0] http://www.downtowntrex.org/