Early Web Ethos

There's no putting the genie back in the bottle. For me, that was the experience of the Internet in the 90s and 2000s.

Maybe it's the nostalgia talking but browsing the web hit differently back then. No algorithms, no monetization brain rot, just curiosity, creativity, and people making things because they loved it.

I built a GeoCities site in the Area 51 neighborhood where I played with JavaScript widgets and showed off the various Webrings I joined.

I found new sites through word of mouth and services like StumbleUpon.

Memes spread through sites like YTMND. Google went public with the motto "Don't be evil."

Some days, between the ads and the AI slop, it feels like we've lost our way. But there are still bright corners of the Internet that give me hope.

• freeCodeCamp and The Odin Project offer full curriculums for free because they believe learning to code shouldn't be locked behind a paywall. 
• MDN Web Docs remains the gold standard for web documentation, kept open by Mozilla. 
• Obsidian lets you build a second brain without shoving your notes into someone else's cloud. 
• NeoCities is keeping the GeoCities spirit alive, one handmade website at a time. 
• And Hacker News and Lobste.rs prove that tech communities can still run on curiosity and good faith rather than engagement farming.

The early web taught me that you could build something useful, share it freely, and trust that the right people would find it. That ethos is what I'm trying to carry forward with Learn with O.J.

#LearnWithOJ #BuildInPublic #SoftwareEngineering #DevOps #SRE