There are still absolutely beautiful websites using basic css and html with little or no js. professional web dev has gotten more complex along with specialization, but you can still build personal sites with 20yr old tech. and some new stuff is simpler.
What we've lost, it seems to me, is the broad indie pipeline to both learning and socializing (and socially learning).
partly because we who learned it 20yrs ago have landed in more specialized/complex jobs.
@mia the personal indie web is still very much there! I suspect it never went away, we collectively just got used to social media feeds and forgot how to surf. There are some large communities, the socialising and social learning is happening too.
Do you mean though, that the learning for these is so far removed from the industrial/professional web practises, that building for yourself doesn't get people up to starter job level any more?
@sarajw oh I phrased that very carefully. :)
I know people studying HTML/CSS purely as an art form, fucking rad! That was intended as The Point of my post, against arguments that the web is toooo complicated for it now.
I think instead, we've lost discoverability. I'm not sure the same pipeline into & through it still exists? Or I expect it's much harder to fall into – less opportunities for play built into the walled gardens. Less chance to 'customize myspace' etc?
@mia aaaahhh. Mmm. True.
Though one reason people were tired of MySpace was some of the garish customisation happening - facebook and twitter seemed so clean and simple - and that was the end of that.
I think the likes of Neocities is great, but people have to discover it exists - by word of mouth I guess.
Back in the day you'd get online with your ISP, and they'd give you a little tutorial to set up your provided email, newsgroup access and little bit of hosted webspace. That's gone too.
@sarajw @mia
2000-2005 for local small businesses in London, UK to control their computer & web destiny, installed windoze NT &
1. set up POP3+SMTP mailbox server+clients
2. setup local, staff restricted intranet webserver
3. FTP+CMS for local intranet & external websites.
Since 2010 “SaaS-opolis” mainframe brainwash, computers are no longer “seen or used” as general purpose compute tool. Rather, only opinionated commercial endpoint for extracting money from “consumer” audience.
For real. My first ISP was my college. I got a public web folder with FTP and Telnet access, and a dial-up number. I built my first web site using the editor that was built into my browser (Netscape Composer). It was right there - I didn't have to go looking for it.
But, to be real, even then it was a pretty nerdy thing to do, to have a personal web site :) Most of my friends didn't.
Mia (web luddite)
Sara Joy 
Dawn Ahukanna
Jill Menning