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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?

#311

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

samatman wrote: post #186
nonrandomstring wrote: post #168

The "Cat's Eye" reflector used on roads was invented by Percy Shaw [1] in the 1930s. It's arguably saved miliions of lives and is found all around the world. It is a design that's simple, passive, robust, cheap and very effective, making it one of the all-time great inventions [1] Richard Hollins Murray contributed to the idea

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.

The lunar reflectors are corner cubes. The original cats eye reflectors were glass spheres.

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

#312

Post by jmarchello »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #152
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.

I think this is how software development should be done as well. Software, like literature, requires one to hold all the context in order to avoid contradictions and to get things to fit together.

I think in most cases the best software is made by one or two individuals rather than large teams.

And don't even get me started on how much faster it is. Scrum is the mind-killer.

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

#313

Post by tejtm »

jcims wrote: post #239
justin66 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? That's interesting. I guess for some reason I had never considered that the sun would be taking in fresh fuel from is atmosphere. That is a little less exciting, but only a little bit.

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 either, but smaller than both, plus releasing some energy (yay).

when you get to fusing iron you need a ball about 20 miles in diameter and fusing does not give up energy, fusing iron needs to take energy from its environment.

good thing it is not in the middle of a star big enough to grow a twenty mile ball of iron.

and that kids is where supernova come from once iron fusion starts it all goes in moments collapsing the core and the star above where the core was "falls" into that space gravitationally propelled with enough speed that when it hits the opposite side (falling just as fast in the other direction) everything fuses into "whatever"

that is about as exciting as it gets in this universe

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

#315

Post by jcims »

tejtm wrote: post #313
jcims wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That's interesting. I guess for some reason I had never considered that the sun would be taking in fresh fuel from is atmosphere. That is a little less exciting, but only a little bit.

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.

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

#317

Post by dimitar »

closeparen wrote: post #297
dimitar wrote: post #193

The Clojure programming language was a single person effort in the first years and all of the design and implementation was done by Rich Hickey in the first version (2 years of work, not counting previous experience). He was burned out from the state of commercial programming around the time and funded a sabbatical with his pension savings to work on Clojure. He had at least 3 attempts to bridge Common Lisp and the J…

It’s also of course in the fundamental nature of Lisp that you can change the language by importing stuff rather than actually editing the core implementation.

Clojure somewhat limits that by not having reader macros

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

#318

Post by dwohnitmok »

closeparen wrote: post #297
dimitar wrote: post #193

The Clojure programming language was a single person effort in the first years and all of the design and implementation was done by Rich Hickey in the first version (2 years of work, not counting previous experience). He was burned out from the state of commercial programming around the time and funded a sabbatical with his pension savings to work on Clojure. He had at least 3 attempts to bridge Common Lisp and the J…

It’s also of course in the fundamental nature of Lisp that you can change the language by importing stuff rather than actually editing the core implementation.

Clojure has explicitly walked back some of that flexibility of "changing the language" by deciding against reader macros in return for better interoperability of packages.

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

#319

Post by bduerst »

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?

Given we can make certain plastics from renewable resources, recycle them, or even compost them, I'd lean better, but I also think we're on a trajectory to people preferring 'micro-plastic free' diets.

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

#320

Post by winstongator »

8bitsrule wrote: post #305

Radio engineer and ham Grote Reber [1] independently pioneered radio astronomy back in the late 1930s by building a dish in his back yard in Illinois.[2] (Noone else who knew about Jansky's results followed up.) Tech in that day wasn't up to working at 3.3GHz, so he moved down to 910MHz then 157MHz. In 1939 he discovered Cygnus-A. In 1954 he moved to Tasmania to get away from man-made interference! [1][ https://publi…

"Edwin Hubble and Grote Reber — could there be more than a cosmic connection between them, both being astronomers, one optical and the other radio? Yes, it turns out, there is.

Around 1900 the Hubble family lived in Wheaton, Illinois, and as his 7th and 8th grade teacher young Edwin Hubble had a Miss Harriet Grote who later married Schuyler Reber and bore him Grote Reber as their first son. She often commented to Grote that young Edwin Hubble stood out from other students in his class and that she felt he would go far. In later years, when Hubble's fame was spreading she took special pride in his accomplishments and that she had been his teacher."

WOW

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