I Remember #MyFirstProject on the Web. Do you?
We've all done some cringey things and had some wild aspirations about where the Internet would take us, especially those of us who've been around for a while. Let's take a look at the first project I ever added to the web.
by Ryan Sullivan
I don’t know why exactly, but last night as I was looking at the stack of work I needed to complete before heading out of town for a family commitment, I felt overwhelmed for a minute, and then I started waxing nostalgic. I started remembering some of my early web projects and how much I enjoyed building new things. I thought back to 1996, the first time my family got the internet. We were probably the first family on my block to have it, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
I was sure I was going to be a hacker before hackers were even really even a thing. I’d log onto my favorite BBS (I linked that because some of you are going to be too young to know what a BBS is. Sigh), and would have long conversations with other users about the latest way to get free minutes from your ISP, or how to make free phone calls from a pay phone. The irony, of course, was that I’d spend hours and hours patching my computer for this “free” time that I probably could have payed for had I been working at a job during those hours. But hey, I was fourteen and there was a new digital world at my fingertips.
The Chocobots was a tribute to the amazing cartoon robot team from The Simpsons
Fast forward a few years to when I was a Senior in High School. I had used the internet a lot in three years but primarily for communication, a little bit of scripting, and some “hacking”. I didn’t have a property to call my own. That was the year I worked on building a webpage for the Chocobots, the first ever rap group made up of four white kids from Suburbia, Utah. We were awesome. At least that’s how I remember it. We had mad legit rhymes and even better dance moves. We were having a really excellent time and needed to get the word out about everyone on our crew. There was only one place to go: THE INTERNET!
As I was thinking about that incredible time in my life last night I sent out this tweet:
People started replying and telling me about the way they started on the web, and I was loving all the unique stories. So I tried to formalize it to some degree.
Then the responses started to pour in. Please enjoy this throwback to a slower time on the internet. A time when we were all brand new and things were quite a bit simpler. Then feel free to share your first web project wherever you choose using #MyFirstProject. Let’s blow up the internet and remember, at least for a few minutes, how fun and exciting it was to build.
https://twitter.com/dixonge/status/512069179948552192
https://twitter.com/modemlooper/status/512094384758587393
https://twitter.com/blenderhd/status/512249222104875008
https://twitter.com/jasondotcalm/status/512250894797512705
Now it’s your turn! What’s was your first project on the web? Share using #MyFirstProject and we’ll add it to this post.
