I actually could build a solid enterprise app in 30 days. Really.

Can you give an example? Because that runs contrary to all my experience. I've worked in enterprise most of my career and I can honestly say that "Hello World" is a 6 month timeline (i.e. that is the innate overhead in doing almost anything).

It would take 30 days to simply meet all the required people and work out what they needed. Let alone build, test and all the other things you need to do (even leaving aside non-core-dev tasks like signoffs, infrastructure, deploy, train, rollout, etc).

(In fact, it generally takes a lot longer than that, but for the sake of argument).

Well, my startup is a web platform company. As an example, one of our customers was, as you say, getting applications turned around in 6 months start to finish. Within 2 months after buying our product, one person at the company built 3 applications in 2 months by himself. That was a nationwide car insurance company. I'm sure you've seen their commercials on TV.

Another example. A major car company in the u.s. had a legacy system built on an old mainframe. This system managed peer reviews for different manufacturing plants. The customer migrated this entire system in one month -- including going through the learning curve.

Another example, I myself built a system to help a local small business manage their entire business online /and/ expand their business model to include an additional revenue stream. Total time, start to finish, including requirements gathering, design, and construction: 150 hours.

So yes, it does run quite contrary to what most people believe about application development. It's a paradigm shift and it's real.

Well I wasn't saying it wasn't feasible - just contrary to all my experience. Also, there is probably the issue that we define what classes as enterprise differently.

I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about a paradigm shift though - Are you talking about simply building things quickly? or another shift that is making this possible?

I know, was kind of funny that you used that to make the point. I understand it. It's usually true.

The paradigm shift is one where development is moving away from desktop based environments like Eclipse and Visual Studio to web based development environments that automate the majority of tasks from the database layer to the front end. To build an enterprise system anymore, developers need nothing but a browser.

And yes, when you said "solid enterprise application" I was wondering what you meant by both solid and enterprise. So no, I couldn't build SAP in a month, but I or really any individual now could build a system that impacts everyone in the organization and scales to support them automatically.

It's really intersting how things are changing faster over time with the exponential impacts of multiple technologies coming together into one point of entry. I'm not sure if any of this is making sense. I don't want to get too work related here, I come here to distract myself so my subconscious can do its job and I entertain myself.

I do get pretty crazy about these topics. Sometimes too crazy.

The way to build a solid enterprise app in 30 days is to build a Web 2.0 app that solves an enterprise problem in 30 days, and then spend 5 years marketing it as "enterprisey". ;-)

But thats the problem. Obama has already changed the lives of the 300M people in this country or at least helped in the process. The stimulus bill that he helped pass has permanently expanded the US federal government. His budget will go even farther in that direction.

Exactly.

With all due respect, what did you really expect from him? He ran on a platform of supporting the bailout and expanding the role and scope of the federal government.

I don't remember anything in his platform about supporting a bailout. I don't even remember it being an issue during the campaign and nothing about a bailout is mentioned here: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/politics/2008/bios...

So, what did I expect from him? Change. What has he delivered? More of the status quo, big spending, bad decisions, and an extreme lack of long range vision. Instead, he's solving acute problems by putting the younger generation in even more debt. He has blown the budget deficit from $500B to over a trillion. That's not change, that more of the same.

Even if it's "big spending status quo", actually spending it on making peoples' lives better as opposed to killing them seems like change to me.

I stand corrected.