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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?

#151

Post by pklausler »

karaterobot wrote: post #106

The 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 fo…

Not to take away from Johnson's accomplishment with his Dictionary but he did have a half-dozen staff.

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/septemberoctober/feature...

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

#152

Post by dghlsakjg »

ptudan wrote: post #132

I'd say literature come to mind the most. A Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Beowulf, Pride and Prejudice were the first ones that come to mind, though there are of course many more. Wish I knew more of the non-western classics

This is such a fascinating observation to me. Why has literature largely resisted team based creation? Writing teams exist for other mediums, but literature is almost exclusively written by a single creator who then loops others in after the work is completed.

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

#153

Post by jll29 »

tiborsaas wrote: post #49

General relativity, they haven't found a dent in it yet.

There are some who claim there is evidence that "Albert Einstein" is really a shortcut/brand name for the husband-and-wife team comprising Albert and his first wife Mileva Maric; I read somewhere that they decided to put only his name on the papers to make it more likely that he may get a permanent job. His wife and fellow student certainly was intellectually involved, and Albert wrote to his wife once: "How happy I am to have found in you an equal creature". She was smart yet failed her final exams. (He left her for his own cousin.)

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

#157

Post by 1970-01-01 »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #79

https://www.nirsoft.net/about_nirsoft_freeware.html Tiny utilities (typically under 100 kb), no ads, available for free, and they do exactly what they say very efficiently. The site has been around since 2001.

Not only does he offer the gift of extremely well-made, small, ad-free tools, but also a blog full of tips for using them:

https://blog.nirsoft.net/

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

#160

Post by valenaut »

elliekelly wrote: post #91

Wasn’t lichess developed by one person? I’m not sure how old it is but I think it “withstands the test of time” since there are few (maybe no) other places on the internet so zealously and universally beloved by users.

It has a lot of contributors nowadays, but Thibault made the original site on his own.

https://github.com/lichess-org/lila/graphs/contributors

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