Ask HN: What are some excellent pieces of software written by a single person?

64 points by debanjan16 ↗ HN
A very small team may also count.

Excellent = usability/utility or the quality of code.

79 comments

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Esbuild (it’s open source but much of the work is done by one person)
Minecraft (actually 2 people?), rollercoaster tycoon (written in assembly), the first version of the Facebook, ape (a plasmid editor), Stardew valley, onward VR(??).
Minecraft is some excellent game design, but the code quality of early versions (back when it was only two people) is lacking. They did call it beta and alpha so it's not like they were claiming any different.
Quote from Terry A. David

> I asked God about racism? He said, "sports".[0]

He's an interesting case in the balance between autonomy and bad decisions.

Apparently his schizophrenia was easily controlled but he didn't want to give up what he felt was a direct line to God.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Davis

what is worse, to suffer being yourself or suffer being not yourself? meds are not always the answer...

we all have to go out eventually, some have the "luxury" of choosing the way we go

Thats a nice way to think about it. Perhaps we have more control these days and less choice.

He was also lucky enough to have a supportive family. After repeated trials of forced treatment all agreed that it was not tenable indefinitely.

At the time he passed there was an assumption he'd been killed. He would call people who he felt persecuted him, simply walking by him was enough, the N-word. Many buttock clenching a moment caught on his livestreams.

In the end it was likely an accident with him living around train tracks.

Pinball Construction Set by Bill Budge. Steve Wozniak called it "the greatest program ever written for an 8-bit machine."
1) Chris Sawyer wrote Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon in assembly.

2) SerenetyOS started off as a one man project by Andreas Kling.

1st was exactly what I thought of. One or the other would have been monumental, never mind both!
For games, I believe Stardew Valley was a one man effort including all art and music.
Anything by Fabrice Bellard - https://bellard.org/
Yes.

But not really "anything by" since his most known project is ffmpeg and it was a one-person show only initially, in 2000-2001.

FTL and Into The Breach are made by two developers, Justin and Matt of Subset Games.

Woz wrote all the Apple I and II software.

Cave Story, a metroidvania still actively ported to new platforms today.

Doom had a very small team, Carmack doing most/all of the engine work.

Dwarf Fortress is by two developers, and simulates its environment down to a very precise level of detail.

Many more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6u4pn/what_suc...

Axiom Verge was written by one person (even the music, in his words "that was the easiest part").
Calibre developed by Kovid Goyal it's a one stop shop for eBook management. His reply to the issue

"Python 2 is retiring in thirty months. Calibre needs to convert to Python 3."

was

"No, it doesn't. I am perfectly capable of maintaining python 2 myself. Far less work than migrating the entire calibre codebase.

status wontfix"

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107

You had me until the anecdote. I understand the sentiment and intent of what’s being said, but as a security professional it just paints themselves, their applications, and their user base as targets. Knowing it’s a won’t fix means it’s also easier to sell exploits if not disclosing as it’s clear he doesn’t intend to upgrade to a maintained and supported version of Python, so it should work for longer than most exploits.
On a second look I see that they did moved to Python 3 with Calibre 5 on Sep 2020
If you use the program its plainly obvious this kind of opinion is well spread through it. Of course I deeply respect anyone who puts their work out for free as FOSS but the tool is not a shining example of good software.
His name must have been really unfortunate at the start of the pandemic…
SQLite by D. Richard Hipp also still maintains it by himself I guess Linux kernel could also be considered still being maintained by a single person even though it's mostly contributions from other people, don't know the rules
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There are so many. MIDIBox by Thorsten Klose is great. Open source hardware and software. There are a ton of projects based on it. I am not sure what the level of other contributors are now, but it was mostly or all Thorsten back when I was looking at it 10-15 years ago.

http://midibox.org/

qmail/djbdns written by Dan Bernstein were groundbreaking when released, and are extremely interesting in terms of how to build and design robust software to be deployed in a security-critical hostile environment
Wasn't Git written by Linus?
The initial version was. Linus however handed over the maintainer role very early on after the initial release and hasn't had much to with the active development of git for years.
Redis I would say, by Salvatore Sanfilippo (https://github.com/antirez)
OG redis was great. I think post-antirez it has grown too complex.

I'd be interested in a redis-lite fork.

It's kinda natural evolution. It started with "just a KV store with few extras" and just grew more and more and more extras over time. It's "... and the kitchen sink" of databases.
Stardew Valley
By Eric Barone, including the very superlative artwork and music inclusive.
I've been amazed almost every single day since I installed it few months ago by how useful and well done Dato on macOS is.

https://sindresorhus.com/dato

It fixes one of my main issue with macOS, its inability to show a calendar by clicking on the day in status bar, and adds tons of great feature without feeling bloaty. Great great job. Thank you Sindre Sorhus for making my life easier !

FASM (Flat Assembler) by Tomasz Grysztar: https://flatassembler.net

Unfortunately it won't run on recent Macs since it's written in 32-bit assembly, so some modifications are needed.

GeoFS browser-based flight simulator by by Xavier Tassi
Quentin Zervaas is the creator of the Streaks habit-tracking app (https://streaksapp.com), which I find to be excellent and extremely well thought-out. I’m not sure if he’s still working independently or has a team.
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Total Commander seems to be a one-man effort. Similarly, Sublime Editor is two people IIRC?