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Stumbled on a 1999 blog post claiming 87% of all websites were built by hand in Notepad
I was clicking through old GeoCities archives on the Wayback Machine and found this wild stat on a webmaster's personal page, which seems crazy now but probably felt true back then.
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stone.barbara2mo ago
That "built by hand in Notepad" line really hits... I used to think those old tools were just for hardcore geeks. Reading @robert275's comment and seeing that stat actually makes it feel real, like it was just the normal way to do things. It's weird to picture so many people typing out all those tags manually... no wonder simple pages felt like a big deal back then.
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My dad's 2003 tax business site was pure Notepad HTML. That same shift happened with car repairs, where you used to need the manual. Now everything is a sealed unit you just replace, no real fixing. We traded deep understanding for convenience and it changed what we can even do ourselves.
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