[gothink]

Wow, this is very tragic. I was actually just reflecting on the influence Howstuffworks.com had on my life and interests. Quick story:

My first introduction to programming was building a Geocities website in HTML (using notepad, of course) at a science camp in 1999. They also showed us the "How HTML Works" web page as a resource, which became my first technical resource. I remembering struggling with something on my website and eventually emailing my question to Howstuffworks, not expecting much back. Not only did a very patient and informative woman respond to me, she continued to answer my questions and offer helpful guidance to this very eager kid for the rest of the summer. Without that positive experience, who knows if I would have stuck with it. It's been on mind a lot since I just realized that was 25 years ago.

I hope Marshall knew how much people valued the things he created and the impact they had.

[schiffern]

Marshall Brain also wrote many programming books in the 90s era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Brain#Publications

[ilayn]

Same experience for me. I was able to buy my first drumset from the money I got for making a PHP+MySQL+HTML website for someone (also done all in notepad). I did not know anything about computers but I needed to buy a drumset. And that page actually got me going about how HTML works.

I still remember their animations about car differential which were magical.

[arresin]

This makes me nostalgic for the small internet.