alt Hacker News+1
There's also another aspect - in the early days, and often times that's what's attractive to contributors - the field might be a total niche that appeals to us nerds. But then, slowly but surely, as it gets taken over by commercial interests, that appeal gets totally lost.
Like, it was fun to dabble in HTML and make your own little website in the mid-90s. Now it's a total drag to do "web development" as your full-time job, staring at Claude Code all day long - YMMV.
there's an entire community of people making simple websites on places like neocities. You don't find "web development" a drag, you find making a website for some company you don't give a shit about a drag (as you should).