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Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
101–110 of 375 posts
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#102Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#103TeX, the typesetting system developed by Donald Knuth
and his computer science bible: TAOCP!
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#104There is that guy in India who dug a route through mountains. There is another guy who is building a castle using mostly meieval methods.
1st guy is Dashrath Manjhi.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#105Probably not what you had in mind, but the first thing that popped into my mind after reading the subtitle of your post was Venus of Dolni Vestonice, a little ceramic figurine of a woman dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE. Beautiful piece of art in my opinion (although beauty standards have changed). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Doln%C3%AD_V%C4%9Bsto...
That looks like a pretty accurate representation of an elderly multigravida. Given the likelihood that it’s a fertility charm of some sort, it’s not really indicating anything about changing beauty standards. I imagine if it is a charm that indicating surviving multiple pregnancies was part of the significance.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#106The first thing that came to mind was the Roud Folk Song Index, a database of 250,000 songs all researched and compiled by a former librarian in the 70s, as a labor of love (and scholarly dedication, I guess).
And then Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, a dictionary researched and written by a single man. He thought it would take three years, ended up taking nine years. All the more impressive for the reckless confidence paid off by diligence.
The famous anecdote Boswell reported about Dr. Johnson's confidence in his own abilities as a scholar:
>ADAMS: But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary.
>JOHNSON: Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> say supposedly because ... ... because they did not write the compiler for their game.
> ... because they did not write the compiler for their game. That's like saying a painting isn't a single person creation because the artist didn't make their own brushes from scratch. Maybe true technically, but splitting hairs to the point that it makes the conversation about something else entirely. I, pencil is an interesting essay, but it's not what OP is asking about, I don't think.
For sure. "And did you mine the sand and process the silicon for that computer? I don't think so."
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#108List 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…
Breakout. Built by Steve Wozniak, solely. Exploited by Steve Jobs, Solely. For Atari.
Chuck E Cheeses - Founded by founder of Atari, Solely.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#109Mojang was formed relatively early on in the development of Minecraft and had a small team (and outsourced dev for other platforms) for quite a lot of it's development and obviously now is a behemoth.
Minecraft was pretty damn polished before it ever released, though. He formed Mojang pretty early, but if I recall, there were no employees other than Notch for a long while.
Talking about when it was in beta and the only way to play it was in the browser.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, what? One week? How much coffee was necessary for that?
The core of Git isn't that complicated. A merkle tree backed by a content-addressable store. That's very much in the realm of possible within a week. It wasn't very easy to use in it's first iteration. All of the porcelain that has been built around it is where 90% of the development has gone.
Where by "porcelain" I assume you mean "easy to mishandle and break" ;)