I remember religiously checking the hot deals forum then for insane dot com boom pricing choices (and errors). Fun times. A bunch of us moved to IRC but then Fatwallet sort of ruined things w their volume of users.

Where does that community exist now?

Some went to slickdeals

It was super ahead of it's time with all the crazy functionality and connection.. flowed together really smoothly.

I think there's a need for this kind of thing still, if you have a passion for it you should consider reimagining what kind of content could be needed in 2024.

YC seems to like the kind of esoteric knowledge you probably have.

I retired from tech after 40 years this spring. Im now a farmer in the middle of nowhere.

The big thing i see missing from long ago times is a real sense of community and an all in one site ( article , forums etc). They try and some are decent but there just isnt the connection and i dont think that will ever return. I think reddit and the like sucked all that away from sites and the audience is much much broader so i feel they lose some of that “likemidedness” i dunno im just old and cant really relate to the younger “techies” of today.

Long ago times there was a sense of community, but also of loneliness/isolation at the same time. There was also much more accessibility/approachability, there was less to understand and it was easier to understand because we were spoonfed in bits as things were invented/developed and the reasons behind them. Trying to get my son tech skills I had a challenge, where do I even start? It's all just uninteresting dogma you just need to memorize now but for us it was 'this spec/software developed from this and ah ok I see the reasons why'.

Since 40 years ago there have been what, 400 million people years of development work done? That is harder to digest, harder to approach, harder to feel you are a part of something unique and exciting or of a small community.

I don't care what anybody says, ColdFusion was a beautiful mess and fun to write.

Do you know Lucee?

https://www.lucee.org/

I agree. I did really well in my career with it

Wow! Out of curiosity, which year was it?

Yea we worked on his old site before anadtech. Sheesh so much fun at CES with the gang in lv. Was fun times. My buddy started fusetalk by writing anadtech forums from scratch. It all moved to .net after a couple years and that when i left. Jason stayed on for years

you forgot to answer the question though :)

Oops. Early 96 if i remember correctly. Its been a while :)

I would guess somewhere around 1997 when Anand started the site.