Besides the internet, one thing that's changed is that computing has become a much less solitary activity: in the 90s and 2000s we were still seeing the tail end of the microcomputer era which was very much built by individuals hacking away on stuff at home or in tiny businesses -- and when larger businesses hired "microcomputer" (and to some extent PC, and web) people, they still worked in very much the same way.
Today, the IT workplace is all about "teams and practices", and even if you're working on something intensely personal as a side project, there's still a degree of expectation that if you want it to amount to anything you need to get it out there as a collaborative, open source project. Or a company with other people involved.
At least for introverts, computing used to seem like something of a refuge. That's definitely less true today unless you deliberately do something that's totally personal.
I miss that old computer. That feeling of top of the world when something I made just works, without worrying being judged by framework standard, patterns, team collaboration, pair programming, etc etc
Someone mentioned about 14.4k hayes modem, I miss that too, BBS was a wonder land, people talk and share and respect without worrying being downvoted or disliked.
I miss the world without portable computers, nowadays it's hard to hold on a conversation with someone without her being buzzed away by phone/watch, heck it is even impossible to start a conversation to people sitting next to us, buried her head in her shiny gigantic smartphone.
Besides the internet, one thing that's changed is that computing has become a much less solitary activity: in the 90s and 2000s we were still seeing the tail end of the microcomputer era which was very much built by individuals hacking away on stuff at home or in tiny businesses -- and when larger businesses hired "microcomputer" (and to some extent PC, and web) people, they still worked in very much the same way.
Today, the IT workplace is all about "teams and practices", and even if you're working on something intensely personal as a side project, there's still a degree of expectation that if you want it to amount to anything you need to get it out there as a collaborative, open source project. Or a company with other people involved.
At least for introverts, computing used to seem like something of a refuge. That's definitely less true today unless you deliberately do something that's totally personal.