When I was programming mainframes and minis, we wrote the applications software, it was the utilities, drivers, etc that were managed by pencil-necked geeks that toiled down in the basement. So if writing to a printer (or in my case) sending pen commands to a flatbed plotter via a 9" tape, suddenly stopped working, you picked up the phone and got to yell at someone to fix it.

Nowadays, you have to buy your applications, install them yourself, you have no way of knowing if they are doing what they are supposed to do, and debug the utilities, peripherals and interfaces yourself when they don't talk to each other.

I miss the pencil-necked geeks. We used to call them "systems programmers" and we were "applications programmers."