[Silhouette]

I think you overlooked about a decade where we'd moved well beyond slightly annotated text but hadn't yet entered the era of framework dominance. The Web was a smaller place then, but IMHO a much more interesting one in terms of trying out different designs and interaction styles.

As for productivity vs. possibility, I certainly don't dispute that productivity is one place where the money is[1]. However, that doesn't mean there isn't also room for innovation, and it certainly doesn't mean there's no money in doing things better than what you can achieve with Bootstrap, Angular, and a couple of junior developers who don't know much else. In an increasingly monotone and commoditised technology field, more interesting and/or effective presentation can certainly be a USP.

[1] I might question how sustainable that productivity proves to be over the longer term with many framework-heavy projects, but that's a separate issue and probably not worth getting distracted here.