You'll have to excuse me while I walk down memory lane this month and relate three true stories. If you'll bear with me, I think you'll find they lead to a point.

True Story #1: My biggest claim to fame is I am the inventor of "smart quotes." Back when WordPerfect for DOS ruled the earth, the quotes key inserted neutral quotes—inch marks, essentially, just like a typewriter. Noticing that typeset books used curly quotes, I created and published a macro that mapped to your quotes key and inserted the open or close quote, whichever was needed. Sure, now every word processor has it, but I did it first.

True Story #2: A while back, I took a job that required me to wear slacks and a tie. I told the company I had no clothes like that and it'd have to pay for a whole new wardrobe … which, to my amazement, it did. Now, the one thing I hate worse than dressing up is shopping for clothes, so I looked for a one-stop, pain-free, online way to dress up like a businessman. I couldn't find it. So I did the next best thing—I called Lands' End and told the customer service rep, "I've got $2,000 and need pants, shirts, ties, socks, and belts. I don't personally have much taste, so I'll leave the colors and combinations to you. I'd like as many matching combinations as possible, and I need all of this within a week. Can you help?" She could, and did. About five days later I got a box of clothes, all of which fits nicely and—so I'm told—matches tastefully.

True Story #3: I remember a particular day 16 years ago when I was a high-school senior, sitting in the principal's office. No, I wasn't there because I had done something wrong—I was far too geeky for that. I was there because that's where one of the school's two computers were (both Apple II+'s), and I was teaching myself Pascal (no formal programming classes were yet available). As I fumbled with the basics of graphics programming, I had my first-ever (and probably still the most significant) development epiphany: If I were a good enough programmer, I could make anything—anything—happen on the computer. All I needed to do was imagine the way it should look on the screen, then write the program to make it real.

OK, now we've reached the point I want to make. A few years ago, program ideas were easy to find—even bottom-feeder programmers like me could find the low-hanging fruit. Nowadays, to be a good programmer you've got to have imagination. For example, how do you anticipate somebody wanting to buy a whole matching wardrobe online, much less develop for it?

We're getting to the point where technology isn't posing the obstacles it used to—storage, resolution, connectivity, processing speed. With powerful new development tools (check out our cover story), fast processors, good bandwidth, and smart transaction strategies (see our Middle Tier column), you're darn close to the point where you can make computers do anything you can imagine.