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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?

#521

Post by lisper »

origin_path wrote: post #487
lisper wrote: 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.

Good point. Thanks for the perspective.

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

#523

Post by yuuu »

jmt_ wrote: post #262
simonw wrote: post #32

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

Hey Simon, thanks for creating Django with Adrian. I was deeply interested in programming from a young age but learning Django in my teens sparked a passion for web development that has yet to feign so many years later! Appreciate all your contributions to this space.

wane

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

#524

Post by HaZeust »

joshu wrote: post #301

Wrote del.icio.us and invented tagging. Echoes of my original design are still around (notably account urls being web.site/userid)

My social network Touchbase (www.touchbase.id) owes you a great deal for account URL schemas used by online platforms, thank you!

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

#525

Post by miej »

I created a solution to the prior authorization processes in healthcare that has saved Americans several lifetimes worth of waiting for insurance approval for their medically necessary procedures, prescriptions, and treatments. What would otherwise be a several day to several week long process where the patient has no recourse but to wait and continue to suffer their illness without treatment, my products have shortened substantially, and sometimes even resulting in on-the-spot approvals before they have even left their doctor's office.

It's still relatively small (/early) in terms of rollout/adoption, but I'm always proud to be able to make a real, positive difference for humans in their times of need.

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

#527

Post by shagymoe »

mooreds wrote: post #510
shagymoe wrote: post #496

I saved my company ~$18 million with a 100 line perl script that I wrote in order to learn programming. It parsed a text file containing Jeep parts that needed to be sequenced and printed barcode labels to Zebra printers. One day a construction crew dug up all of our data lines and we lost all comms to Chrysler and our data center. We had to have a rotation of floor supervisors driving to Chrysler to copy/paste order…

I'm so curious. So the process was: * supervisor drives to Chrysler, pastes part orders into text file, saves it a floppy * floppy returns to your company, you open it up and run the perl script, which prints barcode labels * ... then what?

The labels printed directly to the warehouse floor where parts were being sequenced. So, for example, the Rear Right Fender Flares printer would print barcodes labels and the person sequencing would pick up the next label in sequence, look at which color fender flare it specified, go pick that part, apply the label and put it in a sequencing rack. When the rack is full, it gets loaded on a truck bound for the plant.

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

#528

Post by alasdair_ »

bsenftner wrote: post #507
alasdair_ wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bits of it. I wrote the code to figure out where on the planet all the pokestops and gyms should go, for example[1]. But there were five other backend engineers by the time we launched, plus a bunch of front end people, artists, etc. [1] To be extra-clear, all code in the game was touched by more than one person, every one of them better engineers than I am.

Your experience needs to be documented for history. Seriously. The people, personalities, the development setups, the day to day creation - all that is of keen interest to millions.

I'll write it up.

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

#529

Post by powerpurple »

kloch wrote: post #168

At work: the CDN for Megaupload. I was also the guy who had to shut it down when the FBI seized it. Personal non-code project: The first adult LEGO fan conference in 2000. While I got out of that business years ago it has been replicated by dozens of other annual cons around the world. Back then the LEGO group didn't really understand and was very weary of adult fans. Now there's a whole reality tv show about them wi…

what a chad

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

#530

Post by HaZeust »

garyrob wrote: post #500
garyrob wrote: post #368

A statistical technique I developed was incorporated into a number of award-winning spam filters, including SpamAssassin.[1] I'm also apparently the original inventor of the tracking cookie, which had the implication that no one was able to patent it. It was presented in a patent of mine[2] that was about a collaborative filtering technique for recommending ads; I'd come up with the tracking cookie mechanism to suppo…

The spam filter stuff used Paul Graham's word probabilities described in his seminal article A Plan For Spam. It changed those probabilities a bit, to better account for the number of emails a word appeared in. But in the main, my article was about a statistical method (NOT Bayesian) for combining those probabilities. The word probabilities were Bayesian, but the way of combining them used frequentist statistics. Eve…

Legendary story, we've used your spam filter contributions - thank you!
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