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Comment by samgranieri | Hacker News Reader

I was born in 1980 and I find it neat that we grew up without the internet we know now, it was in it's infancy in junior high in high school (93 to 99), and then once we were in the workforce we all got smart phones as we know now. Us Xennials and the millenials that succeeded us (or we're just early millenials) definitely have a unique perspective

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From compuserve through AOL to Starlink today, my have we traveled.

I’m just glad Java applets died.

There was something magical about landing on some random page and being presented with a massive flash loading screen that lasts longer than a minute or a java applet. Find a random link on irc and end up on some black website with an exotic loader was better than Christmas morning for me. The web is so exactly as one would expect now, and it's incredibly boring. Sure, java applets, flash, dhtml, tables and frames were a hodgepodge toolbox, but at least the web was interesting to explore... I feel grateful to have gotten to be a teenager through the 90s actively involved in building web stuff. Not sure if it's just nostalgia and everyone feels this way about their teenage years but the never ending exploration into tech, computers, the web, was enthralling...palm pilots, modems, ram, mp3, irc, wow... even thinking about it today gets me excited for that time.

I love it when I end up on a website that is clearly 100% bespoke and weird.

It’s the closing of the frontier. Pioneers opened up new territory, but now it’s mundane. Bankers, grocers, and town councils have all moved in. Streets have been laid out, fence wire strung, and the railroad has decided how you’ll get from place to place. They’re building a courthouse and a jail downtown. The pioneers’ kids are settled in houses; they don’t know how to dress a deer or pick a spot to sleep rough. The frontier that seemed infinite has come to an end.

I remember having to write a java applet in my senior CS capstone class at DePaul 20+ years ago. I’ve never written one professionally.

Absolute privilege to have lived the time before the internet. In hindsight.. and as say all people as they grow older and look back at the good old days. That too, but time before internet was really something else.

My counterpoint is I first worked for a computer company starting in the mid-80s (I had an earlier professional job but not in tech). If I were to be time travelled back to that role today, I'm sure I would be absolutely frustrated by the utter inability to get timely information about just about anything.

You'd get used to it again, and no one would have expectations that required timely access to information about everything.

Phone books would be a definite regression though. I don't want to physically leaf through five pages of AAAlberts and Aarons to find the plumber.

Sure. But there would still be a huge amount of frustration if you're used to having the information (and being able to quickly get something delivered) at your fingertips. Of course you'd adapt. But I don't think most people would think it was better in any way, shape, or form.

I do still use my local yellow pages every now and then because local tradespeople are terrible about advertising on the internet in general and I don't have many neighbors. But word of mouth is better when you can. The general contractor who will hopefully do a big job for me after a fire is a reference from a local electrician who helped get my power turned back on who was a reference from the deputy fire chief.

I also grew up before the internet but would hate to go back. I envy my kids, growing up when they did. What do you think was better?

I'm definitely grateful social media wasn't around in the 90s. It's hard to navigate school as it is.

That said, while I'm glad to know what pre-internet felt like, no way would I want to go back to that.

Among the things that define my life (partner, travel, education, work, hobbies) almost all have been only been possible because of the Internet.

I am nervously waiting to see what social media is the THING for my daughter's generation (she's 8). One of her friends just got an Apple Watch so it feels like everything is about to change for her and them...

Born in 1959, i miss the days without cellphones.

I don't. Phones have a huge amount of downsides, attention spans, doom scrolling, etc. The upsides though, of this magic sci-fi supercomputer in your pocket, good damn.

Thats what i meant, the phone part.

Some people call them Elder Millennials.

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/boomer-shooters

Absolutely!

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