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Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#481

Three things. - beadm -----> https://github.com/vermaden/beadm - automount -> https://github.com/vermaden/automount - lsblk -----> https://github.com/vermaden/lsblk All of them for FreeBSD system.

clickable (I just removed the indentations): - beadm -----> https://github.com/vermaden/beadm - automount -> https://github.com/vermaden/automount - lsblk -----> https://github.com/vermaden/lsblk

Thanks for fixing clickability :)

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#482
An open source social protection platform to deliver food or cash to the most vulnerables populations: openspp.org . I have been working on social protection platforms with my company for almost 6 years, solution we built has been used to distribute billions of dollars of assistance to people in over 40 countries. We are now implementing one in open source that is being implemented in a middle east country and few other countries are interested.

Edit: Typo

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#483
Hard to choose. Here’s a short list of favorites:

- PyATL (Python Atlanta). Group already existed. Didn’t build it from scratch. Adapting to the pandemic and pivoting to keep the community strong was a challenge. We made it through and now better than ever.

- Worked on ESG software. Helping people invest according to their values. Most people are good. Means the software shifts investments from shitty companies to better ones (IMHO).

- Fixed part of the MCAT registration portal performance a short while back. It went from definitely not able to handle scale to being resilient.

- Worked on Fieldscope. An important scientific app used for environmental research like the Chesapeake Bay cleanup project. Flash in 2018 was a nightmare but made it work.

- All the smaller open source contributions that help remove paper cut level issues from projects. That way maintainers can focus on making the bigger impact.

I know this was rather off topic. We don’t usually get to share this. It’s nice to signal to others that they can make a difference at all levels. You can make the world better right now and right where you are. Go!

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#485
I guess a proxy plugin for IIS and Apache, with extension points in shared libraries and TCL scripts, that our customer support team discovered and used it for stuff I never considered in first place.

Back in the good old .com days.

There were others, but this is probably still the top one.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#486
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct it uses very little resources, especially since most queries are http instead of https. Since there are no user accounts and it doesn't track anyone it doesn't even have a backend database to connect to. Just a couple dirt simple programs written in C with some very easy to remember domain names. I'm not getting any younger so it's really about survivability. Transferring to another individual HN'er p…

I'm 25 and I'd totally take it on, but you're probably looking for an actual nonprofit if you want true survivability. As someone who has used this tool for at least 10+ years (as long as I've known what an IP address is), I'd love to help make sure it stays around.

Maybe it’s an option to found a nonprofit especially for this goal?

If it doesn’t already exist anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#487
post #431

I was nominally the lead engineer on the first release of AdWords, though most of the actual code was written by Jeremy Chau. AdWords pretty much changed the world, though not, I think, for the better. :-( If you want to know what I actually made by myself that I'm most proud of it would be this: https://graceofgodmovie.com/ (I am referring to the movie, not the web site.)

I think AdWords changed the world definitely for the better. A whole lot of niche businesses became viable that otherwise wouldn't have been, and it kept search results clean and fast. The state of the art before then was banner ads on serps.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

#489
post #32

Probably this JavaScript function I posted on my blog in 2003 https://simonwillison.net/2003/Mar/25/getElementsBySelector/

I like seeing this. At the time I remember thinking we needed something like this, and why doesn’t the browser have it already?

Then thinking, I suppose you could do it by (exactly the method you used), but never actually doing it because if it were that simple, someone would have already done it.

Actually, seeing the date, I realize this predates me even leaving high-school, which makes it even more atrocious that I never knew of it!

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