The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

While correct for many parts this article gets a few things wrong imho,

- People in the early 90s probably weren't there so much for the demos as for the swapping (ie game copying), it was called copy-parties before it was called lan or demoparties.

--> As such , the numbers of really active sceners was probably about the same all through the 90s up until 2000, the decline in some areas was probably more a function of money being available to talented people as well as the internet overtaking reasons for gatherings (being copying or gaming)

- "The farting around with 6502's (C64) and blitters(Amiga)" is partly a Swedish thing. (related to the mentioned Dreamhack lan/esport-parties)

--> Those who never left and/or are return-ees (people with grown kids) are heavily into those retro-machines because they were a tad older and grew up with that and always held that special place for them. The last large Swedish demo-generations are still tied up in their careers and/or kids and haven't really begun returning (if they ever will thatis).

- The actually somewhat eventful story of Dreamhack (And the early demise of the Swedish demoscene rejuvenation)

--> Swedish sceners started earlier to get adopted into commercial endeavors, but the death-knell was that a deadly discotheque fire in Gothenburg had happened a few weeks before the 1998 Dreamhack event, rowdy sceners were thrown out since a nervous organization didn't dare have any scandalous behavior after pressure from teen parents with sceners subsequently deciding to start boycotting Dreamhack. Once that rift had happened and quality suffered there was never any real push about keeping the demoscene as a part of their lan-focused culture with an eventual total demise happening.

I think cultures have thresholds, we tried and actually managed some rejuvenation while some of us in that last large Swedish generation was still in our 20s (however as the article points out, it was a trickle and we were probably too few with the wrong focus perhaps), now in our 40s we're probably not going to be inspiring any teens directly.

Also the engagement threshold, as many from our generations are now established professionals (like from people that designed the EA-Frostbite engine,etc) the quality put out as "side-projects" are still enormously more adept than what beginners can approach, yet feeble compared to the pure engineering effort managed by the professional game making tools.

Sure you can easily partake, but it's probably demotivating knowing that what you make has such a long way to go (we feel it ourselves).

Will it die out totally? I was actually more worried 5-10 years ago, kids need creative outlets and the entire AI-storm that might make some demotivated will also create more unemployment for capable people, and after all, the golden eras were during times when kids were getting talented but couldn't find jobs for those talents.

With the decline of interest in stamp collecting, are the prices of rare stamps and collections also depreciating?

Or maybe the prices are even higher because the few who are interested know that stamps are forever a thing of the past, and in a way that makes them more unique and have timeless value.

Exactly this. Whenever I talk about how I got started in computer art over 40 years ago, I always mention the fact that a screen back then was a one-way device: TV network to you. Basic home computers HAD to plug into the TV, and to a kid, this was magic and freedom.

Yes? The point is that it was already "dead" back then yet here we are in 13 years later and guess what it's still not actually dead.

The most recent Stack Overflow survey have vim at 25% and neovim at 14% for the question "Which development environments and AI-enabled code editing tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year?" Even more interesting is that for the 2023 survey Vim and Neovim were at 22.3% and 11.8% respectively.

If the goal is to get more than 50% usage statistics then yeah, you can say they lost, but are dev tools only valid/useful/viable if they have a majority of developers using them? I say they've had tremendous success being able to provide viable tools with literally zero corporate support and a much smaller user base.