Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#351

Post by spullara » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 4:57 AM UTC

For 7+ years mustache.java rendered all the web pages and all of the emails for Twitter. It just does the emails now - they switched to React Native for web. I created it to render my 20k user web site.

https://javarants.com/the-ideal-web-application-templating-s...

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#352

Post by fimdomeio » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

Hard to measure, but I would say that from 2001 - 2003 I created an then co-ran the most well known punk rock website in Portugal. This was way before I knew how to code and before facebook events became a thing, so it was a really valueable source of information for the comunnity.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#353

Post by warangal » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 4:59 AM UTC

We are two friends working on a native app to analyze videos using computer-vision [0]. We have been developing it for more than 2 years, to make sure it works in real-time for all CPUs. Not sure about impact but it is really cool to play and analyze videos in real time and help unlock some of the values stored in lot of video libraries. [0] https://ramanlabs.in/static/videointel.html

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#354

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 5:00 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#355

Post by not_the_nsa » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

I was first in, best dressed to write the R API wrapper for an open source server (ODK Central). Proceeded to go through open source peer review at rOpenSci and made it a robust R package that is now used by a good few people.

The package is of course nothing HN worthy, but I'm proud of having contributed something back to FOSS.

The crunchy bit was parsing form data by introspecting a form schema (then XML, now JSON) which initially nearly made me lose my mind, hence the package name "ruODK"?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#356

Post by sharmi » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

I built a word exploration site niftyword.com. It is used by around 200K people a month. At it's peak it was used by half a million people a month. It is useful enough for some people that random strangers email when I am careless enough to let it go down :)

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#357

Post by fpdavis » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

I don't have one big thing, but several small things that I am proud of having done. I wrote an application to assist in comprehensive cardio and vascular screenings that has been used to [hopefully] save many lives. I wrote an application to process prescription orders using HL7 for a national hospital system to print out shipping labels for their prescriptions. I designed a never implemented system to allow patients to securely control, share and revoke, their medical information between pharmacies, doctors, and other health care providers (if such a system were ever implemented it would have a tremendously positive effect for a lot of people). I wrote a Memcached port for Windows. A couple of libraries to assist other developers. My proudest accomplishment though has probably been mentoring new software developers.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#358

Post by ronyfadel » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

I guess, my internship project at Apple: I added approximate string search to Spotlight.

So even if you made a typo writing something, you’d still get correct search results.

Considering Spotlight is used by millions, I guess that’s super impactful?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#359

Post by gyulai » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #345

I was a contributor to a little pair of libraries called KHTML and KJS, a HTML renderer and JavaScript interpreter. Joined about a year into the project and while I didn't lay the foundations I helped improve the DOM and JS support a fair bit. People I respected told me I was wasting my time because Internet Explorer was the de-facto standard and the idea of a new browser engine becoming prominent was fantasy. Then A…

> I consistently ignore anyone who tells me I shouldn't try something because it's "too hard" or "nobody will use it".

Inspiring. Thanks for your contribution!

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#360

Post by agotterer » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 5:15 AM UTC

MivLives wrote: post #199

kloch wrote: post #168

At work: the CDN for Megaupload. I was also the guy who had to shut it down when the FBI seized it. Personal non-code project: The first adult LEGO fan conference in 2000. While I got out of that business years ago it has been replicated by dozens of other annual cons around the world. Back then the LEGO group didn't really understand and was very weary of adult fans. Now there's a whole reality tv show about them wi…

Thank you for the Lego thing. My mom got into adult lego when she took apart my child hood lego and reassembled them to resell. Now we mail each other sets that the other is done with, and it gives us a great opportunity to connect. We're both anxious people and there's something relaxing about just assembling something where everything has a place. When she found out there's a lego con in my town, she made plans to…

That’s a wonderful story!

My 3 and 6 year old love lego kits. Historically I found myself sitting with them and helping when they got stuck or directing them when I saw they made a mistake. More recently I decided to pick up my own kit and build along side them. I’m currently working on the Saturn V rocket. It’s been a lot more fun for me and a way to bond with my kids.