Waste of ressources
"Machine code is hard to write. That leaves out most of the current generation of programmers."
KO, then let's drop the current generation of programmers and send them to school where they can learn proper programming. It is not so long ago, maybe 10 years, that I managed a business suite, a complete ERP system, on a system where the max size of a compiled program was 64k.
I remember also one of the last versions of OS/2, where IBM proudly announced that they had managed to squeeze the kernel size from about 800k to 700k, making it run faster on the customers existing HW. Now thats a very different attitude from the one displayed by Microsoft. "Great news! We have hired Afghani peasants as programmers - ups sorry - engineers, and by real hard work we have managed again to explode everything to immense size - please buy new HW."
As for the environmental side of the picture, I have created real good results by removing the PC from the office user, and given them thin clients instead.
