Okay, perhaps that is my "damn-kids" mentality but design and interface metaphor have totally kicked function's ass in the past five years. You don't have to look far to see some major examples of that (Win8, Gnome, anything on a tablet/phone). The applications I'm talking about can only be consider equivalent to a point.
So yeah. In terms of productivity (and useful life skills) the software I grew up with is better than what a kid with a tablet has today.
I also used to really love browsing Encarta 95. I do look up a ton of stuff on Wikipedia these days but I rarely go there without direction.
Yes: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview
By the way, I started programming in '99, and since I didn't have a computer at the time, I learned JavaScript, since I could run it on IE4 on public machines. So yes, a browser (and, I guess, Notepad) is really all you need!
Besides, since then and between PHP/Python/etc shared hosting and tools like Codeanywhere (which can talk to S/FTP servers), a web browser is enough for building web applications.
(Of course, the web is far from reaching the potential of desktop development, of course. But it has come a long way already)
Neat! I eat my thoughts (It's the kind of thing I miss by using vim for almost everything).
EDIT: But it is a separate app...
"The script editor can be accessed directly at http://script.google.com, or by launching it from one of the Google products which support built-in access to the script editor, such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Sites."
In Spreadsheets, you just need to go to Tools → Scripts → Script Editor.
If you're the kind of person who looks under the hood, you're going to do it regardless of whether you're working on a desktop word processor or a web app, and it is my strong opinion that these kinds of intelligent and curios people are still coming into this world.
There's quite literally an app or site for almost everything on the internet.
It's great that you think your curiosity and drive for knowledge is somehow unique in this world, but I suspect you're wrong and just have a damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn mentality. The web has only made knowledge and possibility more accessible, not less, and it's naïve to think that it's a dumbed-down version of the "incredible software" you grew up using.