"Back in the day, we had developers and we had users."
Yup. I was there. I had a strong preference for development tools which would let you lash up a working demo/prototype on the fly whilst talking to the user. It did depend on having good users. I had a colleague who'd put together a demo and then find the users rejected the whole proposed system because they didn't like something about it and couldn't get their heads round the idea that it was intended to refine what it was they wanted.
"Then, slowly, all the hangers-on moved in - the business analysts"
It depends on the business analysts. If you get a good one it's great to be ablel to bounce ideas off each other. I've had that a couple of times.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
