I read in sci.electronics.design that john jardine wrote (in ) about 'what's a callback?', on Wed, 22 Dec 2004:
I don't think we know for sure why the software business shows all the signs of a species about to go extinct through spending too many resources on lavish body decoration (read 'features that hardly anybody will ever use'). It may be that corporate purchasing is to blame; it is easier to get authorisation for $10 000 than for $100, because if it costs $10 000, it MUST work, whereas for $1000 it MUST be too cheap. And forget $100 entirely - that must be some sort of evil program that will cause the company to collapse.
Even back in the 80s, lots of people were calling attention to the poor quality of PC programs compared with, particularly, BBC Micro and Acorn programs. No doubt RISC had something to do with that, but there was a pride of achievement in producing compact code. The market for these computers and their software appreciated that, too, because while memory and storage were not hugely costly, funds were often very short and many computers had minimal memory and disc capacity.
The people writing high-class compact code now seem confined to the same freeware and shareware market sectors.