What were the major projects that changed that? Rails and Prototype.js feel like early examples where there was a major cult of personality around their creators, but I don't know if that was really unique to them or something that was just an extension of the webdev / css / web standards blogger culture of the era— A List Apart and all the people who would got to SXSW every year to chit chat with each other on panels and share the hottest new way to make a row of tabs without using a <table>.