There's also another aspect - in the early days, and often times that's what's attractive to contributors - the field might be a total niche that appeals to us nerds. But then, slowly but surely, as it gets taken over by commercial interests, that appeal gets totally lost.

Like, it was fun to dabble in HTML and make your own little website in the mid-90s. Now it's a total drag to do "web development" as your full-time job, staring at Claude Code all day long - YMMV.

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fl4regun a day ago | parent | next [-]

there's an entire community of people making simple websites on places like neocities. You don't find "web development" a drag, you find making a website for some company you don't give a shit about a drag (as you should).

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graemep a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Nothing to stop you doing simple little websites.

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mcv a day ago | parent | next [-]

That is the internet I want to see again: people making their own little websites with questionable design choices about whatever topics they're passionate about. I'm willing to tolerate blink tags and animated gifs for this.

	▲	chasd00 21 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It’s all still there but you’re going to have to find it just like the “good old days”. No algorithm is going to push it to you, you’re going to have to spend the effort.
	▲	mulderc 19 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Check out Kagi small web.

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icantevenhold a day ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s just much harder getting paid for that…

	▲	nazgulsenpai a day ago \| parent [-]
		The point is that it was fun to make it for yourself, about anything you're passionate about. There was never a pay calculation because you did it on your own, because you wanted to.