3 ms·

My theory for why this is is that in the past when the web was arcane and challenging to learn to develop, this actually acted as a filter for people who had a

by johnfn 6y ago

My theory for why this is is that in the past when the web was arcane and challenging to learn to develop, this actually acted as a filter for people who had a special sort of intellectual curiosity and passion to really push through and make what they wanted to make. It’s great now that the web is so broadly accessible, but now no such filter exists, so truly creative sites are fewer and further between.

rlt 6y ago
So, where are 2021's version of 1990's web?
- percentcer 6y ago
  indie games
- johnfn 6y ago
  I mean, by the time we find it it won’t be niche and arcane any more :-) Maybe roblox?
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    Crappy remixes on TikTok and Instagram that can’t hold a candle to the hay day of YTMND? The other poster is probably right, the indie game scene is pretty prolific with jams and remixes and has more collaboration than most early web phenomena.
    - johnfn 6y ago
      I think that may be nostalgia talking. Some of the stuff my younger cousins send me from tiktok is genuinely hilarious - IMO definitely superior to ytmnd though YMMV.
krapp 6y ago
The web wasn't that arcane or challenging to develop for - plenty of people without that much deep technical know-how managed with raw HTML and CSS, copy and paste and w3schools. Although most people weren't that creative, either. If anything, web development is far more arcane and challenging now. No one just writes HTML, CSS or JS in a text editor anymore, the bare minimum expectation is to use complex frontend frameworks and NPM and compile everything from other languages. Compared to the sprawling, byzantine nightmare of modern web development, JQuery plugins were a breeze. I think, it's simply the case that the web has matured, and more people are concerned with content than the superficiality of quirky presentation nowadays. Just as it's possible for an author to publish a book without knowing typesetting or running their own press, one can publish to the internet without knowing even the basics of HTML, CSS or JS. And of course the web has coalesced around a set of standard layouts and visual language, as any media paradigm inevitably does, mostly because it has done so around a few standard frameworks. But then let's be honest, most Geocities sites kind of looked the same, too.
- tomgp 6y ago
  No idea why this has been down voted, I think there’s a lot of truth in it. That said I don’t agree with the conclusion ;) I think there _was_ a more interesting an varied texture to the web back in the day. A feeling of experimentation and a freedom from the pressure to produce something “professional”. It feels like the rules of the medium are much more rigid now and to break them you must choose to do so deliberately rather than just kind of having to because of the lack of existing convention.
- johnfn 6y ago
  I mean, this is easy to say, but I don’t think anyone in their right mind would willingly go back to 90s era web development of they had a choice. JS was a pitiful version of its current self - and good luck debugging it without browser debugging tools. CSS was done primarily with tables. Iframes were used everywhere. The state of the art web development IDE was notepad++. Browser inconsistencies were rampant and I hope you enjoy working around browser bugs because IE5 is ridden with them. See, the thing about all the modern development infra we have is that it wasn’t just invented for fun - it solves real problems. Jquery was created to smooth over browser inconsistencies. Webpack was made so that when you import 20 JS files they don’t all clobber each other’s namespaces (ok, there’s a bit more to it, but bear with me here). NPM was made so that you can install dependencies without having to hunt down the JS download on Google. This whole thing of looking at the past with rose colored glasses is a bit too easy to take too far.

by johnfn 6y ago

rlt 6y ago

So, where are 2021's version of 1990's web?

percentcer 6y ago
indie games
johnfn 6y ago
I mean, by the time we find it it won’t be niche and arcane any more :-) Maybe roblox?
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  Crappy remixes on TikTok and Instagram that can’t hold a candle to the hay day of YTMND? The other poster is probably right, the indie game scene is pretty prolific with jams and remixes and has more collaboration than most early web phenomena.
  - johnfn 6y ago
    I think that may be nostalgia talking. Some of the stuff my younger cousins send me from tiktok is genuinely hilarious - IMO definitely superior to ytmnd though YMMV.

krapp 6y ago

The web wasn't that arcane or challenging to develop for - plenty of people without that much deep technical know-how managed with raw HTML and CSS, copy and paste and w3schools. Although most people weren't that creative, either. If anything, web development is far more arcane and challenging now. No one just writes HTML, CSS or JS in a text editor anymore, the bare minimum expectation is to use complex frontend frameworks and NPM and compile everything from other languages. Compared to the sprawling, byzantine nightmare of modern web development, JQuery plugins were a breeze. I think, it's simply the case that the web has matured, and more people are concerned with content than the superficiality of quirky presentation nowadays. Just as it's possible for an author to publish a book without knowing typesetting or running their own press, one can publish to the internet without knowing even the basics of HTML, CSS or JS. And of course the web has coalesced around a set of standard layouts and visual language, as any media paradigm inevitably does, mostly because it has done so around a few standard frameworks. But then let's be honest, most Geocities sites kind of looked the same, too.

tomgp 6y ago
No idea why this has been down voted, I think there’s a lot of truth in it. That said I don’t agree with the conclusion ;) I think there _was_ a more interesting an varied texture to the web back in the day. A feeling of experimentation and a freedom from the pressure to produce something “professional”. It feels like the rules of the medium are much more rigid now and to break them you must choose to do so deliberately rather than just kind of having to because of the lack of existing convention.
johnfn 6y ago
I mean, this is easy to say, but I don’t think anyone in their right mind would willingly go back to 90s era web development of they had a choice. JS was a pitiful version of its current self - and good luck debugging it without browser debugging tools. CSS was done primarily with tables. Iframes were used everywhere. The state of the art web development IDE was notepad++. Browser inconsistencies were rampant and I hope you enjoy working around browser bugs because IE5 is ridden with them. See, the thing about all the modern development infra we have is that it wasn’t just invented for fun - it solves real problems. Jquery was created to smooth over browser inconsistencies. Webpack was made so that when you import 20 JS files they don’t all clobber each other’s namespaces (ok, there’s a bit more to it, but bear with me here). NPM was made so that you can install dependencies without having to hunt down the JS download on Google. This whole thing of looking at the past with rose colored glasses is a bit too easy to take too far.