The Evolution of Point-and-Click Development

Three decades of building websites without understanding what you're building

The WYSIWYG Era (1995–2003)
FrontPage 1.0 & ColdFusion Launch
Vermeer releases FrontPage. Allaire releases ColdFusion—the first database-driven web server. JavaScript created in 10 days at Netscape.
1995
Microsoft Acquires FrontPage
Microsoft buys Vermeer for $133M. CSS Level 1 becomes W3C standard. The separation of content and presentation begins—in theory.
1996
Dreamweaver Arrives
Macromedia releases Dreamweaver 1.0. Unlike FrontPage, it makes code view accessible. The professionals start using it.
1997
Macromedia Acquires Allaire
Drupal 1.0 launches with 18 core modules. Macromedia absorbs Allaire, gaining ColdFusion and HomeSite. Tools consolidate.
2001
WordPress Launches & FrontPage Dies
FrontPage 2003 is the last version ever. WordPress 0.7 launches quietly. Microsoft exits; a new era begins.
2003

The Slop Was Visible

You could spot a FrontPage site from the _vti_ directories alone. Inline styles everywhere. Marquee tags. The mess was obvious to anyone who looked.

The CMS Revolution (2004–2020)
The Plugin Architecture
WordPress 1.2 introduces plugins. The ability to extend without coding. The birth of point-and-click development 2.0.
2004
Adobe Absorbs Macromedia
The WYSIWYG era ends. Adobe acquires Macromedia. Dreamweaver lives on, but WordPress is rising fast.
2005
Official Plugin Directory
WordPress launches its plugin directory. The ecosystem explodes. Anyone can extend WordPress without writing code.
2006
10,000 Plugins
The WordPress plugin directory crosses 10,000 plugins. There's a solution for everything. No coding required.
2011
1 Billion Downloads
Total plugin downloads cross one billion. WordPress dominates. Professional sites built entirely from plugins become common.
2014
The Gutenberg Revolution
WordPress 5.0 introduces the block editor. Page builders proliferate. The line between "user" and "developer" blurs further.
2018

The Slop Was Hidden

Sites looked professional. Themes were polished. The bloat and technical debt were invisible—until performance actually mattered.

The AI Era (2022–Present)
ChatGPT & GitHub Copilot
AI coding assistants go mainstream. Developers can generate code from natural language. The paradigm shifts again.
2022
"Vibe Coding" Is Born
Andrej Karpathy coins the term: "fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists."
Feb 2025
Word of the Year
Collins Dictionary names "vibe coding" Word of the Year. 25% of Y Combinator startups have 95% AI-generated codebases.
2025

The Slop Is Sophisticated

It looks like real code. It might even work. The underlying architecture, security, and maintainability? Unknown even to the person who "wrote" it.

The tools change. The question doesn't: Do you know what you're building?