What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by throwaway787544 on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @09:22AM (#31002317)

I think even more than mailtools/fileservs and punters, my favorite thing about AOL progz was just being more expressive. When you hung out in TeenPoolParty13, you could be extra cool by sending text that was wavy, or mixed colors, or different sizes, fonts, etc when the actual UI didn't let you use that many options. But it let you embed HTML (and I guess UTF) so with a prog you could be more expressive, or just plain weird.

I've never forgotten how progz, Geocities, and MySpace all showed that people want to express their individuality and experiment if you give them the chance. But the boring commercialism of the 2010s internet killed the user's ability to be special.

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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by KyeRussell on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @09:49AM (#31002706)

I have an inkling of the pendulum swinging the other way. Even beyond the usual “all the nerd boys are stoked about iMacs having colours again after decades of boring grey”, there are other hints at people increasingly pushing for more self-expression online. I hope that the next Facebook is a bit more like MySpace in this regard, though that’s certainly an extreme pipe dream.

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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by ct0 on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @09:29AM (#31002428)

I was just thinking about progz! I miss those and cant even find any examples of them documented on the internet. Where has the rainbow color text gone?!

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Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by TeKxNiPP on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @07:38PM (#31009551)

AngelFire!

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