The suggestion that the native state of many proteins is intrinsically disordered (or, as originally termed, unstructured) is now integral to our general view of protein structure and function. A little more than 10 years ago, however, such challenge to the almost dogmatic ‘structure–function paradigm' was pure heresy due to the overwhelming evidence that structure determines function. A decade of steady progress turned skepticism around: this 10-year recap review outlines the situation a decade ago and the major directions of the breathtaking advance achieved by experimental and computational approaches. I show that the evidence for the generality and importance of this phenomenon is now so insurmountable that it demands the inclusion of ‘unstructural' biology into mainstream biology and biochemistry textbooks.