To me it sound a little bit as if you are generalizing from a very small and privileged percentage of the population. As you say, it has been employees of $EMPLOYER who wrote their specifications, i.e., trained programmers. For them such customizations and the ability to customize may be reasonable. But when a layperson uses an office suite or a browser, he doesn't need such skills. Even worse: If a layperson needs to be able to program in order for him to use an office suite or a browser, then that's not just bad product design, not just a waste of precious lifetime, but the willful abandonment of a defining feature of civilised society: the division of labour. What @evan tacitly proposes is thus some kind of neo-Amish self-sufficiency. Most of such endeavours don't work and lead to impoverished and destitute forms of existence. (There is a reason why most alternative communes working their own land went out of business 20 years ago.)