[navyrain]

What is omitted from the article is the difference in the _size_ of the tech industry during the last 20 years. In 1995, the year the author romances, he emphasizes that doing anything in tech was hard. Two decades later, the hard problems have not gone away; the industry has broadened such that there are more opportunities across the entire spectrum of "noble challenge". There are more opportunities in making fluff, and more opportunities for even more difficult, admirable, and impactful undertakings than were ever possible before.

The industry has not been overtaken by the get-rich-quick charlatans, it has expanded enough that they can find a place.

[astrodust]

It did seem like everyone plus dog had a startup in 1995 and most were working on the absolutely stupidest ideas possible just that they were more B2B focused than B2C in that era.

I'd argue the CueCat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat) was the iconic culmination of five years of feverish insanity.

[gaius]

You say that, but at least it was an actual technological product. These days you get Buzzfeed whose product is "lists" and Upworthy whose product is "misleading headlines".

[Blackthorn]

Buzzfeed is an outlet that performs real journalism. If you cannot see what their product is and what they are doing, perhaps you need to open your eyes.

[UrMomReadsHN]

Is this sarcasm?

[Blackthorn]

Have you ever read the site? Like, actually read it, not just glanced at something someone linked you or the front page?

[UrMomReadsHN]

My opinion on BuzzFeed isn't relevant. I was asking if it was sarcasm or not because I was interested in looking into it myself if it wasn't. Wasn't going to waste my time if you were trying to make a joke.

[icedchai]

1995 was actually a few years before the insanity took hold. Most people still didn't know what the Internet was back then.

1998-2001 is when things got really crazy. Arguably things getting almost as bad now.

[drvdevd]

Yeah when I read the post, I kept thinking about the fact that there are a number of areas in which the just plain interested individual could focus their efforts to achieve the same general feeling of depth the author had back then. And this can also transfer across technical domains in unexpected ways. For example, in-depth knowledge of how the Linux Kernel's network stack works could transfer to a large eventual cost savings when some BGP implementation is improved based on that knowledge. And maybe that improvement turns out to be mostly 'algorithmic' and maybe that algorithm was devised by someone working in JavaScript.

I think the network hardware issue alone is a good example of where the complexity in the stack has probably increased exponentially since the 90s.