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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)

#291

Post by fault1 »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #278
GekkePrutser wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet this is what a word doc looks like under the hood. Especially if you see what kind of crap code something like frontpage produced. Lots of boilerplate muck and stuff cancelling each other out. We used to call it Strontpage at a place I worked. Stront means shit in Dutch. Dreamweaver was so much better and it embraced CSS instead of trying to avoid it. Though I liked coding in just an editor, for me as a non-gra…

Funnily enough you can see what a word doc looks like because the x in .docx is “XML” so save the word doc as .html and bask in the flaming dumpster fire of the font definitions at the top inline CSS.

Yes, versus the old school .doc format, pre-xml, which was a proprietary format, but was reverse engineered by most of Microsoft's rivals. at least wordperfect had pretty good support.

I think Microsoft introduced .docx in what? Office.NET.

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

#292

Post by 3np »

theK wrote: post #89
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #79

The awesome thing about that period was how we learned. You'd be on a web page, see something funky (positioning, rounded corners, etc) and be like "how the heck did they do that?". Then you do the ol' "View Source" and now that technique is in your toolkit. In fact you'd prob head right over to your geocities site and try it out right away.

Yeah this was awesome time and it did teach you more than just the trick, navigating unknown codebases, extracting the meaningful parts of a non trivial piece in f code… I really think the web community lost something with the transition to compiled uglified js and css…. Sure google will show you to some code if you manage to put what you are looking for into words but that isn’t always easy. Pitty that there is no s…

There is. Source Maps.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/So...

Can’t tell if you’re sarcastic or not, assuming not all comment readers will be aware either way.

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

#293

Post by ehnto »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #120

My first software dev job was in the 90's writing PHP for a mom and pop ISP that was trying to get into app development. It was originally supposed to be Perl, the job interview was something like: Me: demos CRUD app for keeping track of my record collection, hosted on a free site Owner: You wrote this? Me: Yeah. Owner: This is in Perl? Me: Yeah. So I got hired. The day I got there, he told me they were going to use…

Love your story, it reminds me of my first long term software gig, where I was actually stacking boxes and writing software. I was managing an eCommerce site for a local gym! Best of both worlds?

I think everyone should get some grassroots software work under their belt, it's a really different experience working as a team member in an unrelated industry and providing a unique value to an otherwise non-software company.

I don't want to soapbox too much, but it is part of my hope for the eventually reduction of software salaries, so that software can become a more integrated and boutique part of life. There are so many problems that would be better solved with small scale software instead of impersonal SaaS.

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

#295

Post by icecap12 »

hbarka wrote: post #228

I love this. All the talk of low-code-no-code now have never heard of FrontPage 98.

I remember my reaction the first time I looked at some code produced by FrontPage: "what the fuck?"

Like others have mentioned, the volume of useless code produced by those visually-driven HTML editors was ridiculous. Took forever to sort through it when the same thing could be accomplished with just a few lines.

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

#297

Post by goshx »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #79

The awesome thing about that period was how we learned. You'd be on a web page, see something funky (positioning, rounded corners, etc) and be like "how the heck did they do that?". Then you do the ol' "View Source" and now that technique is in your toolkit. In fact you'd prob head right over to your geocities site and try it out right away.

Yes, and I hated who came up with the tableless websites lol

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

#298

Post by JohnBooty »

ehnto wrote: post #293
rufus_foreman wrote: post #120

My first software dev job was in the 90's writing PHP for a mom and pop ISP that was trying to get into app development. It was originally supposed to be Perl, the job interview was something like: Me: demos CRUD app for keeping track of my record collection, hosted on a free site Owner: You wrote this? Me: Yeah. Owner: This is in Perl? Me: Yeah. So I got hired. The day I got there, he told me they were going to use…

Love your story, it reminds me of my first long term software gig, where I was actually stacking boxes and writing software. I was managing an eCommerce site for a local gym! Best of both worlds? I think everyone should get some grassroots software work under their belt, it's a really different experience working as a team member in an unrelated industry and providing a unique value to an otherwise non-software compa…

Yeah. I'm enjoying the current inflated salaries but this is not sustainable, and it really shuts smaller, non-software companies out of having inhouse fulltime developers.

    it's a really different experience working as a 
    team member in an unrelated industry and providing 
    a unique value to an otherwise non-software company.
This can be the best thing ever, or the worst thing ever. It all depends on whether or not management is willing to learn about how the software development process works and adapt to it.

I remember the days from 2000-2015, I worked at a few places like this. Doing "revolutionary" things like actually introducing source control, offsite backups, etc. to places that had never heard of such things.

At some places this was challenging, but rewarding. At other places ownership was constantly aghast when they had to shell out for some random software licenses or SaaS subscriptions. I view it as a part of my job to explain and justify expenditures, but going to war with management over every rando $100 "what the FUCK is 'git hub???'" purchase gets old fast.

Overall though, I am now a little nostalgic...

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

#300

Post by kingcharles »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #124
rufus_foreman wrote: post #120

My first software dev job was in the 90's writing PHP for a mom and pop ISP that was trying to get into app development. It was originally supposed to be Perl, the job interview was something like: Me: demos CRUD app for keeping track of my record collection, hosted on a free site Owner: You wrote this? Me: Yeah. Owner: This is in Perl? Me: Yeah. So I got hired. The day I got there, he told me they were going to use…

I wish interviews were like this. Show them something you built and you get hired instead of the nonsense of leetcode.

Requiring coding tests etc just wasn't filtering more than random chance when I was hiring. I ended up pulling in people who had the most preposterous CVs to see what they were actually like.

One guy was a ninja. A black belt in ninjitsu, apparently. I asked him about his ninja skills (he looked like Harry Knowles). He said he could make himself invisible. I was like O_O. I asked him to demonstrate. He said he couldn't do it right now as we already knew he was there. I told him to leave the meeting room and "come back in invisible." He said it didn't work like that. I asked how it works. He said "Let's say I'm at a party.. I can enter the room and walk completely through the crowded room and not a single person will notice me." I think I know what was happening....

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