I think this is half the explanation. The other half is that people stopped making cool internet things just out of the passion and craft of it. Now everything on the internet is "content," a hyper optimized form of human intellectual output that is devoid of art, minimal on information, excreted instead of created, measured to the lowest common denominator, monetized yet worthless, just enough bait on the hook for the next lizard brain click. And we ourselves have changed, trapped in this giant skinner box, too hooked on the next dopamine hit to dig deeper for our novelty. Even professional journalism is quite dead and with it went our collective consensus reality; instead we are left in a house of mirrors looking at endless reflections of special interest talking points. The world is an incredibly interesting place, but none of that makes it to the internet anymore.
In the meantime, go read an old gem, seat61.com and reflect on what we have all lost.
This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day. Usually more often. Even in the hellscapes of Twitter or Facebook, you'll find interesting writing, weird animations, or new illustrations. There's immense creativity released daily. Too much for one person to ever keep up with.
Just because strip malls are plentiful, doesn't mean good architecture no longer exists.
And I remember the old days. For every hand-crafted gem of a site, there were a 100 with little more than a grainy photo of Slipknot and an "under construction" animation.
>This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day.
it's pretty undeniable that the web was more unique before the tooling and resources existed for laymen to easily spin up a site using an off-the-shelf solution, style-sheet, template, etc.
The grainy photo of slipknot may have been the same one from site to site -- digital media was uncommon and was generally scavenged from band sites and similar -- but many of those sites had hand-written code to facilitate the photo. Handwritten code that was unique and different from site to site.
Yeah, there is more artwork and toys on the internet now -- that's a function of the massive surge in popularity and accessibility and the world's populations finally getting to 'come online' -- but 'uniqueness'? That's way down ever since GeoCities and getting worse every day since.
It's now trivial to go find 1000s of Hugo/Gatsby/Hexo/Jekyll that all use the same exact style sheets and templates, but with different data on each site.
That's nice from an accessibility stand-point, but we lost a degree of uniqueness and creativity without a doubt.
I'm old enough that I had to hand-write all my web code when I started in the business, and I still do. Primarily because I never liked templates or wanted to learn how to tweak them - that's learning someone else's framework and being at their mercy. As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. So I can charge $200/hr while someone building a template site might be making $15/hr. And my code isn't necessarily as flexible or future-proof. But it's built to do [insert specialized UI/data feature] that nothing on the open market does.
I really miss the efforts of early self-built websites, experiments, online games - even the really bad ones. I also think that having to jump through hoops to publish content made people think harder about what they were putting out in the world. Making the process of publication brainless lowers the bar of entry to, well, brainless people.
> As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it.
Where do you find companies and individuals willing to pay $200/hr for basic, non-templated web code?
(Or is it one of those things where they find you...)
I rely on word of mouth and repeat business. There are a number of sites I've rewritten 3 times since the early 2000s - first in HTML/PHP, then in Flash/PHP, then in JS/PHP or Node. The code isn't (usually) that basic. I got known in the '00s for doing large, complex Flash sites - some fun ones on the art side, for bands and games, but mainly on the business side, doing online stores, CMSs and reservations systems totally in Flex/Flash. These were not what you'd associate with crazy animated Flash pages; my training was in graphic design, and these were pretty glossy, full-page responsive sites. They were also full-stack jobs, so when mobile became a thing and Flash died, a lot of clients came back needing a new front-end for an existing SQL/PHP stack that still worked. Now a lot of those have been refactored again as PWAs.
For really "basic" stuff, like doing a static website with a couple forms for an auto shop or something, I usually advise people to just go with a template solution. But one of the advantages of being solo is I've built up a really extensive set of tooling over the years, including my own lightweight CMS that's applicable for certain things where non-technical users just want to occasionally edit and preview content in-page. So that's deployed in some places.
Really, the $200/hr rate is to keep away cheap clients. It kind of obscures the fact that I work fast, so, if a client knows exactly what they want from a static website with a couple forms, I might knock it out in 8-12 hours, plus another 16 from the graphic designer I work with (who's billed separately at $100/hr). This isn't unreasonable for, say, a lawyer or a mechanic who wants something high-quality that doesn't look like every other site. We're a one-stop shop, so we'll also do logos, print pieces, etc. at the design rate. I also handle all the hosting, server management and domain registration for smaller clients (everything except email servers) and just send them a retainer bill for $400/year that includes all that plus 2 hours of support. On the higher end, there are a few companies whose stores and business apps I wrote way back who just need to keep making upgrades and changes, so I'm usually booked out for six months and rarely take new clients anymore.
I think the pricing works for a couple reasons. Initially I did it because I was tired of clients changing their minds or requesting endless unnecessary features that I felt cluttered up what should have been clean, easily navigated UIs. This was very prevalent in the Flash age when everyone wanted unnecessary animations and crazy splash pages. I would give an estimate for the number of hours involved at the beginning of a job based on the original features they requested, and anything beyond that I would start charging the hourly rate; it dissuaded them from waffling on "let's try this" and ruining their own websites. Over time I came to realize that a certain group of people like to show off a little and say they paid extra for something unique or higher-quality, or from "this guy who's the best" - and the people they bragged to would want to show that they weren't cheap either. Whereas I'm a guy who's like, "guess how cheap I got these boots", CEOs tend to be more of the "look what I can afford" type. And I'm not above tapping into that psychology. An additional benefit turned out to be that as a result of paying more, they actually trusted me more to make good calls about UI/UX, because you trust someone more who comes personally recommended, but also because professionals trust someone more who charges in or above their own income range. I realized this when I found out my in-laws' tiny mortgage office was paying a database specialist $500/hr - back in 2006 - to come in once in awhile and work on their Salesforce installation, back when I was only charging $50/hr for full stack web work. To them, she walked on water. I started raising my rate annually.
One lesson I learned from the art and design world, before I even got into coding, was that under-pricing your own work is the kiss of death. Keeping my rates high enough to drive some clients away has given me more free time and let me shape my career in a direction I actually want.
What I've learned from your (very excellent) post — and this is what I suspected, really — is something you may not like: $200 an hour isn't enough... you're not charging enough. Sorry. And yes, my post was bait in hopes that I would metaphorically lure you out of your lair. Sorry for that too.
You've spent 2 decades building a reputation as "the best guy in the area", you're booked so solid that you don't bother taking new clients, and your rate doesn't reflect your reputation or productivity and your current retainer, including your own labor inputs, is hardly more (probably less) than a basic small-business managed hosting plan.
At $200/hr and your self-described productivity, you're not the "look what I can afford" provider, you're the value provider. Basically, you're doing your "basic", "non-templated" web code (which, oh by the way, includes your own hand-rolled infrastructure) for less than the cost of the template-nonsense that plucky entrepreneurial types are selling to small biz all over the place. (Again, you'd be amazed at what small businesses end up spending just in hosting. It's often as much or more.)
That's what it sounds like to me, anyway. And all this comes with a big fat disclaimer: you know infinitely more about your business than I.
P.S.
> I realized this when I found out my in-laws' tiny mortgage office was paying a database specialist $500/hr - back in 2006 - to come in once in awhile and work on their Salesforce installation, back when I was only charging $50/hr for full stack web work. To them, she walked on water.
It's possible I don't charge enough, now. I'm cautious about raising rates, and the last time I did was pre-Covid. 2020 was pretty rough, with almost no one interested in building new infrastructure; luckily I had long jobs to carry me through most of it.
The $200/hr rate now isn't that different from a $50/hr rate in 2006. It was about half of what a smaller web bureau or design agency would charge at that time. My selling point was that I had the knowledge and will to do the work, if not the manpower and response time that a full agency could bring to bear. So - yes - it has always been a value proposition for my clients who have to trust that a one-man code show with a couple designers in tow can write software that will last ten years and is worth the technical debt incurred with a custom platform. I always remind them that unlike a company, I can get hit by a bus.
But I also omitted the fact that I really only enjoy writing fun, interesting code now... and there isn't much of that. So I find myself spending half the day on my own projects. I don't maximize my income by working long hours. Typically, I work on client projects 2-4 hours a day unless there's a short deadline. Maybe I should charge more for those hours, but I also feel a bit of moral obligation not to raise my prices too steeply on the clients who've made the decision to put themselves into my technical debt. And a lot of times I just do tech support without putting down a charge at all, if it's not really a big bother to me.
If inflation really goes crazy or if this situation ever began to feel like I wasn't being compensated fairly, I would raise my rates more sharply year to year. But... I grew up in ad agencies since I was 15 and got good at eyeballing the price points that brought in just the right customers. I used to be like a "Price is Right" contestant at that age, with the boss asking what I thought an account was worth, what a job should cost, and what they could afford. I've been accused of being too conservative in my pricing before. And of being too expensive. I don't think, personally, that maximizing the amount of money you can get out of a job is a good strategy for building long-term trust.
I have one client who, I know, thinks they have gotten an unfair and obscene amount of value from my hourly work. At one point when the stress of what they were putting on me was breaching what I could handle, even if I doubled my rate, they perceived this and just gave me a percentage of the company. So I'm of the attitude that if you do good work, and really put your complete attention into it, the world will provide for you. I hate hustlers and businessmen, hungry entrepreneurs, etc. I'm not a competitive type. Good craftsmen will never starve. To some extent, coders overrate their importance as part of a priesthood of industry in something new and poorly understood. We're architects and "engineers" with no real qualification. If the toilet in your small business backs up, the guy who comes to fix it is worth more than re-designing your online store. Or - differently, and I'm rambling here - I drive a 1980 Datsun. The only guy within 500 miles who knows that car is a mechanic who has Datsun tattoos on both of his arms... and lives in his shop, surrounded by Datsuns and charges an eminently fair rate. He built a new engine for me after I hauled him an old block. A craftsman.
Too often I hear, "you could be rich", or this or that. From ambitious people, of course. The truth is, the great thing about this life is that I have no ambition to be rich by working for someone else. If/when/how I get rich will only be if/when one of my own projects makes money. Without investors, who I hate, and certainly not on these clients' projects. I don't want or need to take advantage of them just because I could do so.
/rant - Hey, this just touched off a lot of thoughts and I don't normally explain my full thinking about this.
In 1997 a classmate would write HTML on paper with a pencil during class. It slipped my memory until recently & now I like to imagine it worked out well for him.
I learned perl on paper and pen with a copy of Larry Wall’s Perl in a hotel room in Long Beach. (An ex’s business trip, nothing to do during the day and too young to rent a car.) Having to check my own work with no interpreter (until I got home) really made me think both when I wrote it and when I reviewed it. Helped grok the concepts that were new and the syntax.
I'm a little confused to be reading comments where people are nostalgic for that. I feel like I always have to remind people that the web was horrible back then. All I remember from that era is that everyone used Myspace, which allowed you to load arbitrary Javascript and CSS into your profile page. When you visited a new person's page, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not it would slow your browser to a crawl because of all the auto playing videos and javascript animations. And also it seems to have allowed any number of XSS attacks. So maybe the code was "unique" but it was all unified in its singular purpose to annoy you and crash your browser and get your account hacked.
If you consider Myspace to be the apogee of that internet generation then you could say Facebook was the product that killed it off completely, which now seems to bring its own hell of annoyances, security issues, and autoplaying videos. Maybe not much has really changed after all?
Where are you getting myspace out of that comment? The author seemed to be talking about regular static or semi-static sites with hand-crafted HTML and CSS, perhaps driven by a bit of Perl or PHP.
Yeah, myspace was terrible, but it was the facebook of the time. Very popular with teens and some adults. Not so much with those of us who had been denizens of the net (not just the web) for a decade prior.
I didn't mention that because I think the "website with just some simple HTML and CSS" has moved mostly to Facebook and Medium and things like that. "Small bit of Perl and PHP" has been replaced with Wordpress and Squarespace. Those things are still around in a modern form. Nobody needs to do things the old way so they don't. My observation was just that if you're looking for the vibe of the old Geocities web, to me that disappeared along with the death of Myspace, for very good reason.
The other thing I remember about the web back then is that it seems to have had (relatively speaking) about as many cranks, kooks, conspiracy theorists, and other "outsider" types as it does now. There's still plenty of weird stuff to find. The only difference is they do it with memes on facebook now instead of on a Geocities site filled with stolen animated gifs. Some things just never change.
Smaller subreddits are a great counterexample as well. Many are teeming with user creations, be it art, short stories, personal projects, etc. Just about anything and everything can be found there, and much of it is people just doing their thing for no profit besides an integer counter on their post.
Here are a couple of user created content subreddits I like. They fall into the general overlapping categories of making and fixing things, and taking cool pictures of clouds, plants, and *nix desktops. :)
If you prefer the new layout you can "s/old/www/g".
It sort of both. There is probably more cool stuff out there today in absolute numbers, but less in relative terms as the businesses pushing clickbait and blogspam come in. The percentage of cool stuff decreases even as the amount increases, so it becomes harder to find even as it becomes more abundant.
Internet is too damn hard to make these days!!!! When I go back through wayback and look at the sites I was making as an early teenager in the late 90/early 2000s, it was me every month publishing the same thing but you could tell I'd just discovered a new menu in dreamweaver. Tables to tables and frames, tables and frames to some css, css to some dhtml. At some point I learned all the dreamweaver menus I wanted to learn and there isn't any stackoverflow or anything to really learn much more online, so that was that, I moved on to learning linux, and then on to learning irc. I wan't trying to learn to code, I was trying to figure out how to make weird things I could put on the internet. That was fun!
I worked on digitalocean, all my friends are in dev tools etc. I think all that stuff is cool, but the idea of me making a fun mess around project to learn web today literally gives me anxiety, hell even using sqarespace is an unrewarding utilized journey.
> the idea of me making a fun mess around project to learn web today literally gives me anxiety, hell even using sqarespace is an unrewarding utilized journey.
I think vanilla javascript isn't too hard, but it is kind of hard to find easy and fun onramps to it.
This reference is what recently inspired me to do some things in vanilla javascript: https://htmldom.dev
Actually, more people are making cool internet things than ever. The internet is in a golden age of creative expression across every conceivable medium. Anything you can think of - art, music, video, games, ARGs, fiction and unfiction.
But they're not putting those things on quirky hand-coded websites, so Hacker News doesn't care. The idea that most of the modern web is boring, uninteresting and not worth anyone's time is just peak tech-hipster contrarian nonsense. Sheer volume alone would suggest that, even if that were true, the interesting remainder would still be bigger than one could see within a lifetime.
No, you're missing my point - the best way to find new sites is to check the link aggregators where people post those sites from. The best way to find new content is on the sites where that content gets posted.
I mean, the fact that you only check a few sites and HN doesn't say anything about the rest of the internet. How would you even know if the rest of the internet is interesting or not if you never bother clicking a link out?
Those sites are vast. There are billions of videos, subreddit posts, etc. It's all under one name but so was all of Geocities. You couldn't even begin to consume all of what is produced on those sites.
They are also algorithmically curated and have a heavy bias towards new content.
Those sites vs the old Internet is basically the difference between a modern supermarket and a flea market, both provide you with lots of stuff, but it's a completely different experience.
Undeserved downvotes. I´d add Discord (not just for gaming, artists, crypto communities and more), Nexusmods and so one. People find or build platforms for their hobbies instead of putting it on their own website. There is so much out there. More everyday. But yeah, just writing websites is not exciting anymore. And why would it?
>Now everything on the internet is "content," a hyper optimized form of human intellectual output that is devoid of art, minimal on information, excreted instead of created, measured to the lowest common denominator, monetized yet worthless, just enough bait on the hook for the next lizard brain click.
I could not have said it better myself !
The Internet has become a place to publish/share every trivial thought that has ever popped into every mediocre mind. There is no self-regulation/self-censoring anymore. The Noise is just overwhelming and it is extremely mentally fatiguing just trying to get at any kind of Signal. You just give up and start numbing your mind with all the junk available.
PS: Here is Veritasium explaining the insidious effects of "Youtube Platform" Algorithms - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 Now extrapolate the same idea to other dominant platforms like Facebook, Google etc. and you realize that "The Internet" has become a platform for Expression and not necessarily Information.
PPS: The book Networked Life: 20 Questions and Answers by Mung Chiang gives an inside algorithmic view of how the above platforms work.
In the meantime, go read an old gem, seat61.com and reflect on what we have all lost.