About Carl
Before "You've Got Mail" Was Famous
I've been in this business since before that AOL chime became a movie title. Back when dial-up was a lifestyle and a 14.4k modem screech meant you were online and living dangerously. Connecting to the internet felt like picking a lock — slow, uncertain, and deeply satisfying when it worked.
Notepad Was the IDE
We wrote HTML in Notepad, validated it by squinting at Netscape Navigator, and called it a
website. JavaScript was something you copy-pasted from a "free scripts" directory and prayed it
didn't crash the tab. CSS wasn't a thing yet — tables all the way down, nested three levels deep,
with a bgcolor that made your eyes water.
Alta Vista Was the Oracle
Before Google, there was Alta Vista — and before that, you just hoped someone had a good links page. Searching the web meant typing a sentence and getting back 40,000 results with no real ranking. You learned to use Boolean operators. You got good at skimming.
The CD-ROM in the Magazine
A CD-ROM on the cover of a magazine meant free internet hours — AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, take your pick. "The server is busy" was just Tuesday. Hotmail launching in 1996 felt like the future arriving early: free email, accessible from any browser, no installation required. Revolutionary.
A Lot Has Changed
Frameworks, cloud infrastructure, broadband, smartphones, AI — the tooling is unrecognizable compared to where it started. But the core problems are remarkably similar: make it fast, make it work, make it useful. Some things for the better. Some things just different.