Way back in 2004, I created an online chatroom. I programmed it on a dedicated ASP server. It was new—one of the very few chatrooms that existed online at the time.
I had programmed many things over the years, but web development was something I had only recently started exploring.
It took quite a bit of effort to build the chatroom, as software technology hadn’t really caught up yet. There was no easy way to send and receive messages in real-time through a single web page—until I stumbled upon an unintended quirk in how browsers worked. About a year later, a technology called AJAX became widely supported, which made it much easier for browsers to communicate with servers without leaving the page.
After it was built, I hoped it would catch on. But days passed after launch, and not much happened. So I forgot about it for a while—until months later, when I randomly checked in and found masses of users logged in. They had been chatting for weeks. The chatroom was alive!
People from all over the country were chatting, forming bonds, and returning to the room day after day. Many of them met up in real life—and yes, babies were born!
The chatroom still exists today, untouched from its original quirky design, and can be found here:
