Unsounded is a phenomenally nuanced and gorgeous webcomic created by a solo writer/artist. It's the only active webcomic I follow. http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/
If you like this, you may also like: order of the stick
Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
271–280 of 375 posts
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#272I'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.
As others have said, it's more of a crediting thing than the actuality.
Brandon Sanderson, a modern fantasy author, is famous for having an entire corporation of editors, storyboarders, and researchers. But only his name goes on the book.
I've studied Shakespeare a fair bit, his plays were certainly not written truly solo. But as the lead creative, alongside with humanity's love of hero worship, only his name stood the test of time.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#273An intern I met a few years back built a Farnsworth fusor while he was in high school. He showed me pictures of it in operation, complete with some really cool shots of the plasma. It occurred to me a few years later that the helium atoms he snapped together will likely survive until they are swallowed up by a black hole or maybe have a front row seat to a supernova or gamma ray burst. So likely hundreds of billions…
It'll be a bit of an anti-climax, compared to some of that stuff. Those helium atoms are likely to be fuel for our sun somewhere along the line when it's burning down and becoming a white dwarf. Our star isn't big enough to do the supernova thing.
What's the ballpark startup cost to get it up to supernova volume?
Would scaling up production of Farnsworth fusors help?
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Breakout. Built by Steve Wozniak, solely. Exploited by Steve Jobs, Solely. For Atari. Chuck E Cheeses - Founded by founder of Atari, Solely.
> 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 'fun for the whole family' bit comes in as part of a custom set of things on top of the generic restaurant experience that were thought of and attributed to the people responsible for the concept -- in this case the Founder.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#275Richard Stallman: Gnu Emacs, GCC, GNU Debugger, GNU make.
They all started as one man projects. Then others started to contribute little, then more.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#276Multiple monograph examples come to mind, from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, to Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Alexander's A Pattern Language, and many others.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#277Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#278No post body was provided.
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#279Confucius
Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also has the distinction of being the cheapest way that anyone can verify that human artifacts are on the Moon, by bouncing a laser off one of several retroreflectors left behind by the Apollo missions. You can't quite prove from there that humans were down there as well, but let's say it pushes the balance of evidence in the right direction.
There's a convincing chain of evidence that the retroreflectors were placed by humans, but while I can probably verify there are good reflectors there now, I can't verify there weren't good reflectors there before the mission. I didn't have access to lasers back then, when they were quite expensive and I wasn't alive.
You could record where the reflectors are and how many you observe today. Then, assuming your progeny hold sufficient trust in you and your memory, your children would be able to compare your notes with their future notes, by which time NASA will have placed additional retroreflectors on the moon. The difference would be proof that we've been to the moon.