{"id":12106,"date":"2015-08-27T14:42:09","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T18:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=12106"},"modified":"2015-08-27T22:38:02","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T02:38:02","slug":"a-salute-to-solo-programmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/27\/a-salute-to-solo-programmers\/","title":{"rendered":"A Salute to Solo Programmers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mondaynote.com\/2015\/08\/24\/a-salute-to-solo-programmers\/\">Jean-Louis Gass&eacute;e<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/programming\/comments\/3i856m\/a_salute_to_solo_programmers\/\">comments<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.mondaynote.com\/2015\/08\/24\/a-salute-to-solo-programmers\/\">\n<p>Parkinson&rsquo;s Law tells us that &ldquo;work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion&rdquo;. Applied to software, this means that applications tend to bloatware, obese programs whose complexity makes them nearly impossible to debug and maintain. Today, we look at happier counterexamples, past and current, of ambitious products created by &ldquo;hermit programmers&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, the size and complexity of operating systems and development tools do not pose completely insurmountable obstacles; we still find programs of hefty import authored by one person. One such example is Preview, Mac&rsquo;s all-in-one file viewing and editing program. While the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Preview_(Mac_OS)\">Wikipedia article<\/a> is out of date and tepid, the two-part Macworld article titled <i>The many superpowers of Apple&rsquo;s Preview<\/i> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/2863923\/the-many-superpowers-of-apples-preview-app-part-1.html\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/2865527\/the-many-superpowers-of-apples-preview-app-part-2.html\">here<\/a>) does justice to the app&rsquo;s power and flexibility. Read it and join me in my appreciation for this labor of love from a solo, unnamed programmer who, I&rsquo;m told, has been at it since the NeXT days.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Newer than Preview but no less ambitious, we have Gus Mueller&rsquo;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flyingmeat.com\/acorn\/\">Acorn<\/a>, an &ldquo;Image Editor for Humans&rdquo;, now in <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/acorn-5-image-editor-for-humans\/id1019272813?mt=12\">version 5 at the Mac App Store<\/a>. To get an idea of the breadth and depth of the app, scan the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flyingmeat.com\/acorn\/docs\/index.html\">documentation<\/a> on the company&rsquo;s web site.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jean-Louis Gass&eacute;e (comments): Parkinson&rsquo;s Law tells us that &ldquo;work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion&rdquo;. Applied to software, this means that applications tend to bloatware, obese programs whose complexity makes them nearly impossible to debug and maintain. Today, we look at happier counterexamples, past and current, of ambitious products created [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76,406,1261,27,295,30,32,1260,102,71,1259],"class_list":["post-12106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-acorn","tag-appleii","tag-apple-writer","tag-craft","tag-history","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-pinball-construction-set","tag-preview","tag-programming","tag-visicalc"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12106"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12116,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12106\/revisions\/12116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}