I just came across a statement made by a prominent industry figure about how WS-* is becoming so complex that it is not practical to implement a WS-* architecture with no tool/stack support. Well, what's wrong with relying on tools/stacks? Isn't that how humans have made progress? That is, a specialized few focus on a complex area and produce a useful package that can be used by others in tackling completely different complexity etc. Does a construction engineer have to understand the inner workings of all construction tools? Seems to me that if we start eschewing tools as a principal, we will all end up more or less cavemen. I'd rather use tools.