I've spent a lot of time on Slashdot, linuxforums and so on and always been interested in following development from big software companies and used to always watch Google IO and similar events
But the last 2 years or so, it feels like everything is just targeted and adapted to normies and we who actually use and create the stuff is totally forgotten. Before it was like programmers creating things for other programmers, and you could expect a certain behaviour in any homepage or app. Like the typical HN example of how sort by date or length is removed from Youtube or Facebook. Or how all the APIs is either getting limited or super expensive. Before there was many apps like TweetDeck released that built ontop of other things, but they are now always getting bought up or sent some lawyer letter
I don't know if there is a profability reason or I am just getting older, but I just have this odd feeling that both people and companies in tech is not just so into tech anymore.
I mean I even miss good old flamewars that could create a 1500 comment thread on Slashdot about some new JDK version. Now instead we have people like TechLead who talk about levels at FAANG companies and passive investment and stuff like that, which doesn't interest me at all but apparently is very popular by the software developer crowd
again I have a bit hard to put the finger on what feels off, but just this general feeling of software for the sake of software and discussing it on it's own merits is dying out both offline and online
I was amused at how quickly the ignorant and indolent dropped NFTs like a hot potato when they realized that (1) ChatGPT could write their pitch deck and (2) ChatGPT’s pitch deck was more likely to be funded than theirs. (Not because ChatGPT’s pitch deck is good but because theirs is bad.). The blockheads are still doing their blockhead things, somebody is still buying BTC, but few outside a hard core could care at all.
Longer answer: We're leaving the early(ish) days of the industry. Tech is well established and solidly mainstream now, and it's even viewed as a prestigious path for young, intelligent people who have it together to pursue. Apps and sites are targeted at the average non-power user. I suppose you can say software has shifted from a creative medium to a mostly consumptive medium.
I do miss some of the old hacker style crowd. People that didn't care where you were from or if you went to school or where you worked, just that you cared to write code and do cool stuff for the sake of it. The feeling of exploring new ideas and doing things just because they were interesting. I feel like if you are caught using vim or emacs now people will raise eyebrows that it's not Intellij lol. Text interfaces are great, the command line is great, love that stuff.
You can also attribute some of this feeling to the centralization of the internet, mass adoption via smartphones, and shift from textual media to image/video media.
It's a different era for sure, but don't lose hope. The barrier to entry for making things is still super low, and there are tons of people out there doing weird experimental stuff. You can also contribute to this too, or not. The old net and community is still around just harder to find. Many of them are also just "logging off" as they raise families or pursue offline hobbies.
Longer answer: I won't be discouraged by the dumpster fire. I've been burned enough in the past to know that vendor lock-in is not for me. Don't waste time on flamewars.
Someone once asked me "There is a book called Computers for Dummies. Why isn't there a book called Computers for Smart people?"
Dig a little deeper. Dream big. Create your own platform that you control, on your own terms, the way you would want it. Don't get lost in the weeds.
The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one else has ever been.
— Albert Einstein
Not that I’ll miss it, it’s just that there’s no where else to go.
The retro computing scene may have some of what you're looking for.
It's overoptimized for profits, and the tech sphere has become subject to that overoptimization.
Nerdiness used to be uncool, but now it's cool because it's profitable, which means "normification". In the meantime, you're now the product, and advertisers are the customers on all the platforms you engage with (except perhaps here and 4chan).