It wasn't like programmers were less creative or productive than they are now. The languages were fully capable of doing anything on a server you could do now.

It wasn't like programmers were less creative or productive than they are now. The languages were fully capable of doing anything on a server you could do now. It was mostly C. Programmers were creative and smart, just like now, and could implement anything, albeit ground-up since there were fewer existing building blocks to reuse. A lot of sophisticated anti-spam software depended on some sophisticated anti-anti-spam showing up first, and there is a lot more of that now for sure.