4 ms·

I know not everybody is a nostalgic nerd with a thing for tech industry history, but, yeah, I'm two years younger and even I was aware of the general history of

I know not everybody is a nostalgic nerd with a thing for tech industry history, but, yeah, I'm two years younger and even I was aware of the general history of Netscape's journey and choices by the time I was 14-15. Perhaps he was too busy putting his head down, pumping out a real product instead of procrastinating and focusing on the past :)

zalew 14y ago
I'm more like: sooo, this dude didn't know crap about the internet and launched one of the biggest websites in the world. #fml
- rgbrenner 14y ago
  this is what I was thinking too. maybe this explains why it was written in PHP? :)
  - mseebach 14y ago
    No. I have no numbers, but I'd say we're looking at 80-90% of all websites written in dorm rooms in 2003 were written in PHP. Most of the rest in classic ASP (which was barely 'classic' yet in 2003). For scale, Rails was released in June 2004, four months after Facebook's launch.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - subsystem 14y ago
      Python was even seen as esoteric back then. http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
rgbrenner 14y ago
I thought about this a little more.. I think the reason I find it so hard to believe is because of the MS antitrust trial. It was a huge thing at the time and Netscape was a big part of it... so unless you were completely oblivious to computers and the internet, it would be hard to not know about Netscape.
- tdrnd 14y ago
  Strictly speaking, however, there is a difference between knowing about Netscape and knowing what they were doing. Myself, I used Netscape software daily between 1996 and 2000 something but can't say I really knew what the company was doing. Sure, I know all about that they released a web browser for free, but I have no real idea (without looking it up on Wikipedia) what they really did for their shareholders. So I could definitely see myself posing that exact same question to Marc Andreessen.

zalew 14y ago

I'm more like: sooo, this dude didn't know crap about the internet and launched one of the biggest websites in the world. #fml

rgbrenner 14y ago
this is what I was thinking too. maybe this explains why it was written in PHP? :)
- mseebach 14y ago
  No. I have no numbers, but I'd say we're looking at 80-90% of all websites written in dorm rooms in 2003 were written in PHP. Most of the rest in classic ASP (which was barely 'classic' yet in 2003). For scale, Rails was released in June 2004, four months after Facebook's launch.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - subsystem 14y ago
    Python was even seen as esoteric back then. http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html

rgbrenner 14y ago

I thought about this a little more.. I think the reason I find it so hard to believe is because of the MS antitrust trial. It was a huge thing at the time and Netscape was a big part of it... so unless you were completely oblivious to computers and the internet, it would be hard to not know about Netscape.

tdrnd 14y ago
Strictly speaking, however, there is a difference between knowing about Netscape and knowing what they were doing. Myself, I used Netscape software daily between 1996 and 2000 something but can't say I really knew what the company was doing. Sure, I know all about that they released a web browser for free, but I have no real idea (without looking it up on Wikipedia) what they really did for their shareholders. So I could definitely see myself posing that exact same question to Marc Andreessen.