1998: When Spaghetti Code Was Just Pasta

Before AI could help us debug, before Stack Overflow existed, and when Yahoo was how we searched the web - I was coding professionally and building my first ecommerce shopping website while still in college. I wouldn't register my first domain until early 1999, but the foundation was already being laid.

Back then, we wrote Perl CGI scripts that would make modern developers weep. No frameworks, no package managers, just raw code and hope. Every form submission was an adventure in parsing. Every database connection was hand-rolled.

The web was simpler but somehow harder. We didn't have Chrome DevTools - we had alert() statements and prayer. Version control meant copying files to folders named "backup_final_FINAL_v2".

Looking back, those chaotic early days taught me the fundamentals that no AI can replace: understanding what's actually happening under the hood. Today's tools are miraculous, but there's value in knowing how we got here.

Published on Sat Dec 12 1998