I said the app was simple, not the stack.

Along with the rise of complexity in tooling, the data has risen in complexity and quantity, as well as the importance of getting it right.

Back then, a dentist, lets say, could get by with a cobbled together VB program for patient scheduling and CRM. Now patients and doctors expect a system that manages digital records in a HIPAA compliant way, can text message reminders to the patients, allows self service on the web, and automatically submits billing details to insurance. Plus, it should be pretty, with all sorts of cute animations!

I’d like to learn how the rising complexity of tooling allows for text messaging, compliance, self-service or mailing(?). Right now this idea doesn’t sound particularly reasonable to me.

You can run a web server for self service, use a job queue on that same server to schedule actions sent to api providers for sms (Twilio) and letter mail (postgrid), integrate with insurers that provide an api if you don’t want to send papermail. All on a single machine, or virtual machine running JS, and serving JS and HTML.

Compliance is a matter of ensuring that you are following correct practices, and possible audits.

In exchange you get a program that can run on any of billions of devices in seconds without having to worry about local deployment.

If all you want is something like VB, you can opt for some of the low-code/no-code options mentioned elsewhere that are built on top of web technology.

I’m not saying that for what VB was used for, it isn’t a better solution. I’m saying that we ask our computers to do a lot more than we did 25 years ago, and tools like VB can’t do as much as the easier to write languages that have emerged in that time.