[kaolti]

Lots of good points made, I'll add mine.

Flash got me started in web design as a kid and put me on a path to earning a good living. Lots of things changed since then but I want to hear your thoughts on one specifically.

It used to be cool to try things and put something together that in the grand scheme of things is kind of bad. I get the feeling that's not the case anymore.

Seems like there's so much pressure to sell the image of you being an expert, there is no room to try wild things and see what happens - which is the basis for learning and development btw. What we get then is everyone copying the "expert" patterns, but hardly anyone doing anything original or truly creative, because it feels risky.

This is probably true for a lot of other creative endeavours that have big $ behind them - the movie industry comes to mind. Sure, there are more movies being made now than ever, but it sure as hell doesn't feel like we're in the most creative era and you know it's got nothing to do with the tools.

Someone please tell me otherwise.

[redisman]

I feel bad for people coming of age now in the world of programming. There's a lot of pressure to follow the best practices and they sure as heck don't involve an easy way to draw a Z colored pixel at coordinate (X, Y). Or to coax a programmed beep out of the speaker. Which is basically how I learned 50% of programming.

You don't really get that visceral moment of magic reaction from web technologies or super polished game engines which is where that happens now.

[zanny]

I think it has to do with the commoditization of image. In the early Internet we didn't have centralized social media so going to a new place and experimenting didn't have ramifications across your social circles via platforms attached to your real name. You could make "bad" stick figure cartoons by night while working a "respectable" career by day and nobody would know who you are either way.

I feel terrible for kids today - they grow up into social media not knowing what it is, and by the time they can comprehend it their creativity has been stifled for years by the implied pressures of conformity and a cultural disapproval of failure.

But theres some nostalgia in that too - its not like every 80s and 90s kid was sitting in a computer lab inventing the next tower defense game. It has always been a tiny minority of kids that get creative from a young age, and if anything the continued availability and quantity of entertainment can serve to keep kids occupied with consumption rather than creation more today than ever before.