So it was all well worth it in the end.

I still think its a mixed bag at best but mostly because tech companies' greed and AI bullshit have utterly poisoned the well.

The web is bigger and flashier and capable of doing more than ever, but it requires a pretty hefty CPU to even do basic things that you could do as fast or faster on a midrange tower from 15 years ago. And all the sites are designed to be addictive. Mobile devices are technological marvels more than ever before, but they're also always within like 2 years of being e-waste, and have become almost completely proprietary and locked into surveillance capitalism, locking out DIYers as much as physically possible. The cameras are great but "processing software" (it was verging into outright editing/enhancement for years even before the latest AI boom) has gotten so "good" that photos often no longer look like real life, they look "better". The 4k HDR screens come from the factory with baked in ads and dead pixels, the videogames are all building in gambling mechanics to make money, etc etc. And thats not to mention "AI" shit