There is four important eras(?) of Minecraft for me:

• Beta 1.2: Before beds, being able to skip the night should have been an endgame thing, you need to suffer! Though, they are also good decoration blocks and aren't too unminecrafty (it's blocky)
• Beta 1.7.3: right before hunger and the end, because fat fuck notch was playing too much skyrim and wanted dragons in the game (the end is pretty cool though).
• 1.7.10: (a little before Microsoft bought the game)
• After 1.12: when minecraft started becoming minecraft 2: Jappa textures, new animations, structures becoming a core part of the game.

If you've only played modern minecraft, beta 1.7.3 is a very different version, there is no overpowered villager trading, no enchantments and a lot of funky stuffs. Many of the blocks you use don't exist.

However, that's kinda one of the reasons why I like it, it doesn't feel as bloated, I mean, think about it, how many added stuff are there in the modern versions that have zero purpose and are never used. It's not about performance, it's cognitive bloat, it's overwhelming sometimes. There is no objective, there is no achievements (wait, there is) but you are the one who makes your own goals and what you want to do.

The few blocks there is in beta 1.7.3 isn't always limiting, you can do shading, use them as colors, or use cobblestone as cobblestone. The variety of blocks there is fits the style, it is very hard to not make something that looks good in this version: Logs and sand for walls, netherrack for roofs, gravel, stone and cobblestone gradients for really big walls, soul sand and dirt. gravel, soulsand and dirt with sugar cane under water to decorate lakes, red wool and brick. Cereal and milk, coffee with jam on toast. Amongst other combinations I like.

This was also the last version before they changed how world generation, they went from very fantasy land full of mountains, funky and beautiful overhangs, floating islands with vibrant green foilage and trees to realistic, somewhat flat, maybe even boring and less saturated terrain. I believe that people probably imagine old world generation when they think of a minecraft world, I believe I can say it's the iconic world geneartion we think of. I find that it is also really hard to build in versions after this as I believe that terrain is very important to a building.

Every block is blocky, there is fences, stairs and slabs, which aren't fully blocks, I guess, however, we don't have these stupidly detailed (and not really minecrafty) blocks like banners and armor stands, moreover, it's a lot more interesting to make banners (and furniture) using blocks instead: a fence and two wool blocks makes a banner, stair sign for chairs, redstone torch under a piston for a table, jukebox between two black wool with a lever on top for a juke box, you don't need a seperate block to make furniture, you make it.

Some of the bugs that beta 1.7.3 have (mostly because of pistons) are very useful for building, for example, forever lit furnaces, rails, trap doors on places it couldn't be placed on for decoration or smooth stone (usually called a crash slab since handling them incorrectly in the inventory will crash your game) by using a sticky piston.

I'd also like to say that this is WAY before Microsoft bought the game and minecraft bedrock which is what would happen if mr krabs made minecraft.