A Salute to Solo Programmers

This is a nice read. I think that the enormous foundation of frameworks, toolkits, and open source libraries that exist today provide a huge lever for the talented individual - Acorn is an incredibly accomplished app and I had no idea a single person wrote it.

Equally, they provide a great crutch for the much greater number of not-very-talented people like me to cobble our ideas together into something approaching a polished product. That's new: I certainly couldn't have hoped to get much done writing 6502 assembler, but with a Cocoa book and a few late nights I'm earning actual money from code I wrote.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#5

Post by gjolund » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

Credit where credit is due

-> https://github.com/sindresorhus

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#6

Post by CmonDev » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

> Today, such singular achievements appear to be no longer possible.

More people than ever are making their own things today.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#7

Post by yAak » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 5:11 PM UTC

I didn't realize Acorn was a solo act. I ignored since I bought Pixelmator first, but now I have to go buy Acorn to support the guy just out of respect.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#8

Post by malux85 » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

I am a solo programmer. In London. I rarely see anyone in my day to day. I work from home. I binge work, sometimes for 18-24 hours at a time - I loose track. I love it. I love my life.

I have almost finished my latest fun project. I'm collecting 25k data points a second. I control 38 servers. I have automated absolutely everything.

i would love to sell it now, but not sure how

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#9

Post by frou_dh » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #3

There are quite a few of these guys still out there. Look at dwarf fortress great example of one guy "doing it on his own"

Just the other day...

Terry Davis showing a game using his own graphics libraries, compiled with his own compiler, running on his own OS:

https://youtu.be/EsFPq6I13vA?t=300

Though I suppose the article has a commercial/organisational slant.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#10

Post by yAak » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #3

There are quite a few of these guys still out there. Look at dwarf fortress great example of one guy "doing it on his own"

Dwarf Fortress is definitely one of those cases. I was (kind of) surprised it didn't make the list.

Beyond it being an ongoing epic masterpiece of a single man (with contributions from his brother), what's particularly amazing about Dwarf Fortress is how much it has inspired and influenced OTHER games being produced, despite being an extremely niche, unforgiving, and unapologetic game.