[dsparkman]

It is because we understood the full-stack.

There was not "frontend" and "backend" developers. There were designers and developers. Designers created designs. They were usually delivered as PDFs, because the bulk of them came from print design backgrounds.

Their designs were then implemented by developers. Senior level developers tended to more of the application level heavy lifting (server-side scripting & db), with junior level developers working on converting designs to html, then to templates. By the time a junior developer moved on to app code, they were well versed and had mastered HTML and all the weird edge cases. They knew HTML.

The first real wave of "frontend" and "backend" developers came on the scene when you had designers learn Flash. They started driving more complex applications and there was a more bifurcation.

Granted even in small teams of the era, you had developers prefer "front" or "back". We tended to value "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one"

[dumb1224]

I missed the era with flash though. I remember the original Gorillaz website which was a full flash-based game / exploration / gallery type of thing. It was so cool and I've not seen anything like that I ended up spending hours and hours on that site...extremely patiently because of the slow internet speed at that time in my college dorm in China (2002-ish I think?). The quality was astonishingly good.