Originally Posted by smack

i disagree. i think there will always be a market for good freelance programmers. there is always the debate when instituting a new piece of software whether to "re-invent the wheel" or to use/modify something that is already out there. i don't think that pre made scripts will ever get to the point of being a magic bullet, there will always be someone who wants more. something different or something innovative.

in my experience i would rather spend the time creating something from scratch than trying to massage a previously created piece of software to my needs. maybe this is a personal pride issue as well, being that i am a programmer, because in almost every case something that i make will run much more efficiently and far more stable than any out of the box solution. most premade options are clunky and involve way too much confusing legacy code.

this is alot of how i feel about SaaS as well. yes you can have a solution ready to roll tomorrow, but it usually comes with either too little, or far too much functionality, and the complexity of integrating it in to existing systems can be staggering. for example in the CRM arena Salesforce.com has spawned an entire child industry of contractors and companies specifically designated to spearhead integrating with their systems to existing data structures.

so to summarize while the upfront cost and time requirement to develop custom software solutions can seem like an enticing reason to go with a pre-made solution, the long term drawbacks to out of the box resources outweigh their virtues.