Craftsmen vs. Tools

Seth Godin's latest Blog entry is titled Tools vs. Craftsmen. He describes how the prices for creative tools came down substantially. His conclusion is: " The bar's a lot higher, because access to tools is a lot easier". We have that situation in software development since Microsoft shipped BASIC with the first PC. You can download Java, Eclipse, #Develop, .NET SDK or Ruby for free. We got a lot more software since then and eventually the bar got lower (if you see and use crap all the time, you get used to it). However he is right: The bar got a lot higher if you want to be outstanding.