I'd like to unpack a bit of this.
1. It's nice to have more user-friendly tools for development. A lot of programmers have refound "joy" in Ruby, Python. The ability to formulate a solution is dependent not only upon understanding it, but being able to implement. Interpreted language satisfy the human curiosity of trying strategies in the small and finding an appropriate foundation to build upon. Compiled environments present a steeper curve and sometimes an insurmountable obstacle to such exploration, since it involves continual refactoring in the exploration phase.
2. Developing asynchronous web applications is much more complex than traditional desktop/client/server apps. Hiding that complexity and allowing users/programmers to work with business rules more directly makes it more feasible and cost-effective to develop business type applications and utilities. This is a smart move by MS and opens up a whole new level of application development in the corporate environment, particularly for companies with multiple locations, remote sales reps, etc. The way I see it, it's an easy to use ASP.NET app builder.
3. Both VFP and Access were interpreted environments with data backends. But, that's where the similarity ends. VFP is a true programming language -- not an all purpose language, to be sure, but unparalleled as a desktop database environment. Most major business applications started out as dBase/FP/VFP applications in the 80s and 90s. Some of the top business developers have used the tool. Access is an end-user tool.
4. Developers shouldn't be afraid of end users programming. The downside is that many such apps are never finished, and they're turned over, with an unnormalized data model and mess of business rules, to a developer as being "90% done." But, other than client perception, the imaginative developer can gain much valuable information from the domain experts who've written the app.
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