How Much Help Is Too Much?

As an old C++ programmer, I remember when, back in the day, classes were hard things to write. Putting together a GUI was not easy at all. People had to think about each little piece of code they put in, because it took so long and hurt so much to fix.
Now I'm not trying to say, "The old days, things were tough, kid!", but I would like to suggest that when you have to think about what you are doing, you tend to do a better job. This leads me to believe that the easier we make programming the computer for people, the more large-scale screw-ups were going to have to put up with.
I remember when Microsoft Access came out. I thought, "What a nice toy! Who would want to use it?"
I found out soon enough: I made some good money with clients who went to the seminar, bought the product, set up their own database, and created their own mess. Since then, most consulting projects I've seen (except for green-field projects) are examples of "client thought it was easy, made things too complex"
So WTF? (What To Fix) I'm not sure. I guess we could torture people while they program, or force them to reboot their computer every five minutes, but that's not going to work. Perhaps just "think before you act"?