[LarryMade2]

In the 90s connectivity was not that great, we were getting into the internet but mainly that was geeks and big businesses. Costs to have reliable connections were still high (fast wasn't in the mindset early on), and remote access was sometimes impossible.

Many standards were up in the air, web development had several privatized niches that lead to dead-end projects. Challenge was to find one that was cheap to license, worked on your platforms of choice, and that your audience would use.

Lot of stuff was thrown to the wall to see it it would stick and didn't.

Worrying about efficiency was not a prime factor, getting something that worked and was stable was more important.

I guess you could draw parallel with AI now a lot of work is on figuring out what to do with it and make its output consistent and reliable long term (cheaply) are probably more in the minds than making it efficient.