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

news.ycombinator.com

371–380 of 759 posts

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

#374
https://www.inaturalist.org/

While I deserve no credit for its current success, it's been used by millions to:

* catalogue millions of plants and animals around the world

* tagged image data has become critical for computer vision training models

* map species range and impact of various natural changes to biodiversity, with data cited in scientific journals

* new species have been discovered through the app

previous HN thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22442479

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

#376
post #139

I designed and implemented the whole graphic system for the World Cup '98 (working 100h weeks for months). Billions of people have watched in real-time the result of my work and I earned absolutely nothing from it :) (there's a fun story to write about this, the tremendous amount of work, setting up the WAN connecting the SGI machines together, building the remote control hardware, etc).

World Cup '98 was the bomb! Your work is part of an amazing history.

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

#378
Built the software to process the Positive Train Control data that is fed into the train engine to perform automatic safety control of the train. It's been deployed and running on passenger rail lines. The goal of PTC was for preventing train derailments but can be used for "autopiloting" a train.

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

#379
post #92

Despite being in the industry a long time, I think most of what I worked on had little to no impact. In terms of impacting other people, probably the biggest thing was blog posts and sample code. It’s funny how sample code has less “cred” than “real” code, but if you’ve ever been trying to start a new project in a new language or framework you know how invaluable sample code can be. In terms of impact in general, wha…

>Despite being in the industry a long time, I think most of what I worked on had little to no impact. This is kinda what drove me out of tech a few years back... I could point to tens of millions (at minimum) of people who had used my work. I could point to hundreds of millions in net revenue / cost savings for my employers and clients. But was it "impactful"? IE: was any major world problem solved, or were lives act…

Isn't that amazing? And yet there are so many of these jobs. They pay well too.

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

#380

Pokemon GO. It was such a surreal moment to finally leave the office after months of crunch time, walk out into the sunshine for lunch for the first time and see almost every person on the street playing the game.

You personally made Pokemon GO?
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