Honestly, I’m not just quietly grieving the old internet — I actively miss it.
I’m talking HTML 4.01 era websites, messy personal pages, and those chaotic old-school internet chat rooms where people just… talked. No feeds, no algorithms deciding what you see, no engagement farming.
In a weird way, DEV feels like a small glimpse of that old spirit again. It’s not the same internet we had back then, but it’s probably one of the closest things we still have today.
Geocities, right? I am THAT old, and i loved how anyone was able to spin a web about literally anything. Not for profit. Just for ... the need of having a webpage about knitting or viking songs or whatever. Then google came and put a dollar tag on everything. The internet as we knew it died that day.
Senior Developer advocating for The Boring Stack. Building Sigilla to fix knowledge management. Writing about the intersection of AI and software craftsmanship.
Contact: nordicsecures@proton.me
Location
North Sweden
Education
Computer Science and Systems Design. Focused on building reliable, long-term software.
Work
Senior Freelance Developer & Founder of Sigilla. Focus on pragmatic architecture and backend scale.
I love that description.
The messy HTML era had so much more personality to it. It was chaotic, but in a very human way. People were just there, making things and talking to each other.
And I agree about DEV too. It’s not the old internet, but it still has some of that feeling of real people showing up as themselves.
What do you miss most from that era, the personal sites, the chat rooms, or just the overall pace of it?
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Honestly, I’m not just quietly grieving the old internet — I actively miss it.
I’m talking HTML 4.01 era websites, messy personal pages, and those chaotic old-school internet chat rooms where people just… talked. No feeds, no algorithms deciding what you see, no engagement farming.
In a weird way, DEV feels like a small glimpse of that old spirit again. It’s not the same internet we had back then, but it’s probably one of the closest things we still have today.
Geocities, right? I am THAT old, and i loved how anyone was able to spin a web about literally anything. Not for profit. Just for ... the need of having a webpage about knitting or viking songs or whatever. Then google came and put a dollar tag on everything. The internet as we knew it died that day.
Yes, totally! I'm just writing my post which I'll publish tomorrow, about my first "Solar System" website. Back then Solar System had 9 planets🥹
Oww I miss Pluto!
Pluto is a planet and my decision is final. LOL.
I second that! Give us Pluto back!
I love that description.
The messy HTML era had so much more personality to it. It was chaotic, but in a very human way. People were just there, making things and talking to each other.
And I agree about DEV too. It’s not the old internet, but it still has some of that feeling of real people showing up as themselves.
What do you miss most from that era, the personal sites, the chat rooms, or just the overall pace of it?