As an industry, we love to build the grand frameworks that can solve all the world?s problems in one unified package. With that in hand, you could in fact just sit down with the user and bang out a solid, robust application complete with security, navigation, user scripting, and so on, coupled with a repository of proven, debugged object prototypes that are customized as required. But with all our resources, we haven't managed to do that very well yet. Applications that are thrown together quickly usually exact a steep price in the long run, leaving behind a quicksand-like pile of Visual Basic, Foxpro, or Perl code that isn't maintainable or extendable at all. This column explores how it's possible that someone can claim to be able to build software that lasts and delivers value, for as long as it's needed, and is simple and straightforward to understand, maintain, enhance, and extend.