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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?

#331

Post by contingencies »

deltaonefour wrote: post #310
bduerst wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Wesley Hyatt - Plastic The guy was trying to make ivory-free pool balls and discovered something that changed the future.

>The guy was trying to make ivory-free pool balls and discovered something that changed the future. For the better or for worse?

A story about the value of synthetic polymers. When I visited the North Korean border circa 2004 the reverence with which the North Koreans treated plastic opened my eyes to its utility. Because they have no plumbing, the North Koreans at the border are considered "wealthy" because they can obtain discarded plastic containers that float across the river from China and allow them to easily haul water. The alternative is pottery, which is highly inefficient. It goes without saying that they had no metal. Another great thing: plastic lenses. Much lighter and cheaper than glass. Good enough for many uses. An Australian invention, like wifi. We are moving away from single-use plastics: someone needs sanction the consumer packaged goods industry.

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

#333

Post by Maursault »

Although more recently the technology has fallen into obscurity, flintknapping has for millions of years stood the test of time, far longer than anything yet mentioned here, and whether we're aware of it or not, we all owe considerably to whomever came up with it, along with the inventor of the wheel, as well as whomever developed the ancient and mysterious techniques to control, use and even create fire, not to mention, of course, whatever unknowable creative geniuses that invented throwing, food, sex, clothes, pockets, wiping the nose, wiping other things, etc. Come to think of it, there was likely a first individual that came up with adding and others for each operator, and these inventions must have occurred a very long time ago yet many still use calculation even today.

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

#334

Post by AlwaysRock »

brimble wrote: post #229
AlwaysRock wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on how you view this. Almost all books are edited by someone professionally. So it's not the sole work of the author. They are also published and marketed and yada yada. If you say okay all that stuff and even editing doesnt count you still have huge best sellers that are team based works. All those book for sale at your grocery store? They sell massive copies and are not written by the author. Dou…

I'm pretty sure the only reason we don't recognize this, while we do with movies, is that there aren't rules governing who's credited and what their credit looks like, as there are with movies. You don't get "Story by X, written by A, B, & C, based on characters by Z", and instead one or maybe two names are on there—you do sometimes see a writer credit (separate from the more prominent "created by") on some of those…

That makes sense. You see people thanked in books but its pretty rare to see any specifics other than an editor or publisher.

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

#337

Post by justin66 »

jcims wrote: post #315
tejtm wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe think of it as "ash" the newly fused element is more massive than the ones it came from and sinks to the bottom (core) When enough "ash" is accumulated (and the star is still big enough) the previous ash begins fusing into some new heavier "ash" rinse and repeat until you get to iron "ash" but no further. the reason is; every fusion lighter than iron is exothermic two atoms fuse into something bigger than eithe…

I do get that part, but I like your description. The thing that I was interested in is whether or not a helium atom in the Earth‘s atmosphere has a way to be sucked into the fusing layer at some point. It just seems from everything that I’ve learned over the years that there’s a net outflow of that would likely keep the little atom some distance away even if it left Earths gravity well.

> The thing that I was interested in is whether or not a helium atom in the Earth‘s atmosphere has a way to be sucked into the fusing layer at some point.

It seems to me there are three possible fates for that helium, and two of them involve being used up by stellar fusion. The helium atoms get somehow pulled into the sun and so eventually get used up in a fusion reaction, the sun expands during its giant phase and envelops the Earth and the helium eventually gets used up in a fusion reaction, or the helium nuclei gets propelled out of the solar system with the solar wind.

It'd actually be fun to estimate the odds of each option but I honestly have no idea. #3 feels like a long shot.

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

#338

Post by bduerst »

otoburb wrote: post #298
bduerst wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dwarf Fortress by Tarn Adams Also worth noting, Chris Sawyer wrote the original Roller Coaster Tycoon code directly in Assembly. It's probably one of the reasons the simulation game worked so well on earlier systems.

I thought DF was written by both Zach and Tarn Adams, and not just Tarn alone.[1] [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xypb5/the-dwarf-fortress-cr...

IIRC Zach was only temporarily involved but I could not be remember it right.

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

#339

Post by idrios »

throwaway4323r wrote: post #218
austinthetaco wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucas Pope is for sure a solo dev. He wrote a custom shader for Obra Dinn while he was also writing the storyline. It's a pretty incredible feat.

I have no game programming experience. What is a shader and what other things needs are required to make a 3d object realistic. I think wireframe and then lighting is another. Seems shading is yet another which provides skin. Other than animation is there anything else?

A shader is the human-editable code that gets compiled into the GPU to do graphics rendering. In terms of 3D objects, "wireframe" is broken into vertices and fragments, where vertices are points in space and fragments are the interpolated positions between vertices. You pass any information you want to the shader from your main CPU process (e.g. time elapsed, screen resolution, textures you want to use, click events, random variables you conjured) and the shader executes whatever you code you wrote for it -- maybe it adds a blur effect, thresholds colors into black/white, mines bitcoin, it just executes whatever shader code you wrote, however creative you wanted to be. Some really cool examples at shadertoy.com

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

#340

Post by kennywinker »

serf wrote: post #274
kennywinker wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chuck E Cheeses - Founded by founder of Atari, Solely. Really stretching the definition of solely when you have to ignore the people who did all the actual work in creating chuck e cheeses - i can “create” a restaurant, but without cooks, servers, hosts, graphic designers, construction/reno people, etc. it’s not going to be fun for the whole family

extrapolating that idea into PC video games makes it seem ridiculous; the solo-produced video game wouldn't run anywhere without the work of hundreds of thousands of individuals within the computer field -- but I wouldn't consider the people who worked on , for example, SMD resistors , to be collaborators with the video game production. in other words ; 'cooks, servers' are generic components of a restaurant; the 'fu…

I disagree. There is a categorical difference between using tools, markets and platforms others made and hiring staff who control the output. It’s like using an open source framework (ruby on rails, say) vs hiring or contracting a team of devs. The founder of chuck e cheese hired a graphic designer who had creative input, cooks who designed the menu, even managers who came up with hiring practices and things like that. To discount that input is to be elitist, you can’t convince me otherwise.
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