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Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

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Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#52
There are a large number of prolific inventors whose technology we still use today in some form or another: There's a lovely little book "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" about Harrison's marine chronometer.

Others like Gutenberg's printing press, Franklin's lightning rod, Whitney's cotton gin, Jenner's smallpox vaccine, Nobel's dynamite, Edison's phonograph, etc. etc. etc. are available in lots of lists.

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#53
Software is a pretty incredible industry because it allows a single person (or small group) to be responsible for something that so many systems are dependent on. Pretty incredible. Look at any modern package manager and see how many packages there are that enable massive businesses and operations that are written by one person and maybe a few contributions here and there.

It's a humbling experience to see people like that.

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#59
What do you mean by test of time?

Is this applicable to Minecraft if there is Michelangelos David, or Beethovens 5th Symphony?

Or some random tech stuff like Git if all the math is run on the shoulders of the likes of Euklid?

But to add something technical:

Nicolas Appert the guy who did canning before Pasteur could explain how it worked.

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#60

List of video games supposedly developed by just one person: https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/the-14-best-games-developed... I say supposedly because I know Jonathan Blow paid someone to do all the art for Braid, and licensed all the music (I even saw him demo Braid before release with his programmer art at GDC back in 2008, it did not look anywhere near as pretty, so he made the right choice). But the artwork was so…

> say supposedly because ...

... because they did not write the compiler for their game.

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