@wholesomedonut @maxc @noa as a former uber-minimalist myself, I agree with your conclusions.

When 12 years ago I redesigned my whole personal website to have a bash-like interface (blash), and built a CMS (nullBB) for forums that didn't allow images at all (instead, it would calculate the edges of pictures through Sobel maps and render them as ASCII art), I wasn't aiming to build something that people could use easily, or quickly be productive with.

Most of these projects don't fall into the "programming for a functional purpose" category (heck, configuring many of those projects requires editing a config.h file and recompiling the source code). They are more in the "programming as a form of art", or as a statement, category.

More than ten years down the line, I'd be tempted to say that enough of this art has been made, and enough of these statements have been made, so they're not even original anymore. If in 2022 one considers accessible and intuitive UIs and stylesheet mastering as disposable skills, then they're just bad web developers.