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Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

zachholman.com

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Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#241

Post by sen »

I was a high school dropout working in a skate shop in the mid 90s, teaching myself web design via view-source, and the owner of the shop asked if I could build him a little website for the store. This was back when only big companies had websites, so him having one for his little skate shop was mind blowing to everyone. I had no idea what I was doing... just copy/pasting various bits I liked from big websites like Microsoft.com or telco websites as they had the "nicest" sites at the time.

It got me poached by a media company who was all-in on the dotcom boom hype and convinced we'd all be billionaires within a year. They paid me stupid amounts of money (for a dropout skater who refused to wear a button up shirt to work) and I cranked out crappy HTML templates for them to sell to people who had "an idea and some money", investing their life savings in the "next big thing". Always felt dirty working there, so I wasn't upset when they went bust and ended up owing millions to creditors and losing everything they had.

That all led to a 20 year career in web stuff for F500s and Government as I self-taught my way through web design, to graphic design, to front end dev, to back end dev, then to netsec. To this day I never finished school or got any qualifications, new jobs would come to me via old jobs. Something I think would be impossible in IT today.

I left tech about 10 years ago now and mostly work on old cars and be a dad, reading HN to see how much things have changed and for the nostalgia trips like this. It's insane seeing how different things are when it wasn't "that" long ago. I can't think of any other industry that can be so unrecognisable within such a short timeframe.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#242

Post by benibela »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #83
marcodiego wrote: post #77

One thing a miss: a simple, easy to use, wysiwyg html editor. Also, these days it also would have to be open source. So, my only options look like bluegriffon, whose license/monetization I don't like, or Mozilla Composer (actually seamonkey), which seems basically abandoned in terms of features and maintenance seem to only make it compile and run on modern system. Some people may suggest a CMS, but I don't want a CMS…

The problem with wysiwyg is that I think CSS makes it hard to make these things. Those editors always seemed to make the kludgiest CSS because the CSS 'cascade' makes it hard to create drag and drop components. Any one more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm wrong.

The hardest problem is wysiwyg for different screen sizes

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#244

Post by irrational »

oblio wrote: post #222
irrational wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got hired on at a Fortune 500 company in the early 2000s. One of the reasons I've stuck around (besides the great pay and benefits) is that I've read all the horror stories of leetcode interviews. I have zero interest in participating in that nonsense. One benefit of this is, when I am interviewing people to fill development position, I never do any of that leetcode nonsense.

You should still check out to see if your pay is competitive for your role, level, etc. Even an awesome environment might be worth moving away from if your pay goes up 50-100%. Especially if you're not super frugal or have expenses due to other reasons.

The problem is I don’t want to move (great house, low mortgage, great area, etc.). There really aren’t any other major companies within 300 miles and all the smaller companies in the area don’t pay anywhere close to what my company pays.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#245

Post by leviathant »

samwillis wrote: post #44

They have missed out Perl CGI scripts from “Matts Script Archive”[0]! I remember much difficulty as a 13YO trying to get his “guest book” Perl script to work for the first time (with all its famous security holes). Oh, and “CGI Proxy”! Hosting that somewhere on a personal site so that we could get passed the filter on the schools internet. Anyone who knew how to host that had great power in the IT rooms! Edit: wow cg…

Around the time the word 'blog' was being coined, I did terrible things to the guestbook CGI script from Matt's Script Archive in order to make it easy for a small staff of writers to update a news site I had started about Nine Inch Nails. I later migrated to a Perl Script called 'News Publisher' by someone named Grant Williams - it's basically a static site generator that runs on Perl and flatfiles. Around 2008, I ported the whole thing to C# & SQL Server, but in the process, refactored and cleaned up the Perl code, and figured - why bother with the big underlying shift? So it's still what powers that NIN website two decades later.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#246

Post by chiefalchemist »

fault1 wrote: post #201
chiefalchemist wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a word: print designers. Traditional print designers started doing web design without investing the time to understand the important differences in the (new) paradigm. Sadly, that root problem too often persists to today.

Agreed. I mean, the whole web page thing is literally a metaphor for people shuffling pages on their office desk.

I do web dev and I swear I have a better understanding of UX and design than 90% of the "web designers" I've worked with. I can't make pretty pictures, but I know an ugly experience when I'm building it ;)

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#247

Post by Aeolun »

oblio wrote: post #222
irrational wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got hired on at a Fortune 500 company in the early 2000s. One of the reasons I've stuck around (besides the great pay and benefits) is that I've read all the horror stories of leetcode interviews. I have zero interest in participating in that nonsense. One benefit of this is, when I am interviewing people to fill development position, I never do any of that leetcode nonsense.

You should still check out to see if your pay is competitive for your role, level, etc. Even an awesome environment might be worth moving away from if your pay goes up 50-100%. Especially if you're not super frugal or have expenses due to other reasons.

But is it worth doing leetcode? I find I can’t bring myself to do it even if it would guarantee me a FAANG position and probably triple my salary overnight.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#250

Post by Jenk »

codazoda wrote: post #236
davidbarker wrote: post #11

That's the first time I've heard DHTML to mean "distributed HTML" — I always knew it to mean "dynamic HTML".

That reminds me of the time someone told me they were building web pages in HotMail. I was like, “WTF?” And then he spelled out HotMail for me, “HTML, HotMail”. I was like, “oh”.

Which is the origin of hotmail.com, too. It was stylized as HoTMaiL.com when launched.
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