Twenty-seven years building for the web teaches you one thing above all: the requests never get more reasonable. They just change costume.

1998. "Can we have more animated GIFs? The site should feel alive, like Geocities."

2003. "Put white text on the white background. Google reads it, users don't. It's called SEO."

2004. "We need a Flash intro. With music. And a Skip button nobody will ever find."

2006. "I saw a site on a CSS gallery. Can you copy it? Exactly?"

2008. "Make us Web 2.0. Rounded corners, glossy buttons, and a Beta badge we'll keep forever."

2010. "We can't pay, but you'd be a founder. Well, a founder/partner. Well, you'd build it all."

2013. "It must work in Internet Explorer 8, but with all the parallax animations."

2015. "Can the 60-page brochure fit on the Apple Watch?"

2018. "We need to be #1 on Google. By next week."

2023. "Add an AI chatbot that answers everything but never says anything wrong, off-brand, or interesting."

2024. "We generated the whole site with AI. Can you… fix it?"

2025. "Everything needs to be powered by agents. The features should operate autonomously, and the agents should communicate with each other to generate new business ideas."

The trends fade. The task remains: delivering the impossible for those unfamiliar with the technical realities, and doing it with a smile.