I am wondering if newer avatars of coding agents can bring that back. Two reasons 1) Code generation is getting faster 2) More and more code is becoming a detail that is expected to work
Imagine a RAD where we have a VB6 like experience and can dive into real code (agent-generated) when the abstraction breaks.
https://github.com/microsoft/Power-Fx
It's not really on people's radar but it seems very interesting and I think a lot of people that aren't on HN use and interact with it daily through the apps it supports.
I spent a lot of time cutting my teeth in MS Access, and would've done a whole lot more in VB6 if it didn't become deprecated so quickly. It's like a whole smooth ecosystem I expected to persist and improve just evaporated, all in favor of much more fiddly stuff or much more expensive stuff (or if you're really unlucky, both).
I would like to see a comeback in this area, with modern security features and reduced bottlenecks for scaling.
I took it for granted, expected it to always be there-- wish I had something similar to point modern juniors to.