I know, I know, it's classic to look back wistfully, but I really feel like something was lost in the past 15 years or so. We just cobbled together this stuff from simple components and had fun. I didn't require a PhD to get your head around it, I feel like people were more clever because you kinda needed to be. Nowadays if something isn't part of the shiny web app you're just shit out of luck. Back then we'd just do another hack and it was all good.