This was my experience, too. During that period there were free tools and accessible information for learning, search was useful and the excitement was about making things. Not products to sell, interesting software to use. Then it all got paved over into a shopping mall. Those tools and information are still around. (If you look hard enough past the edges of the shopping mall.) I just spent my morning before work once again working on free software, but the mainstream culture of programming is depressing to me now.