Ask HN: What is something impressive you have built or achieved?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=756580

by wave • 17 years ago

52 88 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

One of the question from the YC application is "Please tell us in one or two sentences about something impressive that each founder has built or achieved".

This might be a good question to ask everyone by posting it here because there are a lot of people in this community that have achieved or built impressive thing.

What is something impressive you have built or achieved?

run4yourlives3• 17 years ago

My Sons. (Still building them, as a co-contributor)

What, not the answer you were looking for? :)

mixmax• 17 years ago

Exactly the nerdy answer I was expecting. Make sure you clear out the bugs and get a clean build early on, it'll save you a lot of trouble later.

run4yourlives3• 17 years ago

No way, these things are clearly products of successive iterations. No waterfall technique here. :-)

rguzman• 17 years ago

release early, release often?

wlievens2• 17 years ago

Especially when practicing.

alain94040• 17 years ago

Sounds like a good lead for bragging, but not sure if this community actually encourages it.

I'll go with: first to write a mainstream article with the word "Internet" in 1992 (at least where I lived at the time).

To add some balance: first to miss the Internet revolution in 1993, sounded like old news to me :-)

zasz4• 17 years ago

Oh dear, I didn't mean to brag.

jcdreads• 17 years ago

It ain't bragging if you can back it up.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/503362.html

cosmok• 17 years ago

Personal bookmarker and web-history search.

zasz4• 17 years ago

I just finished cycling across America yesterday. I didn't go on my own, since researching the route would have been very time consuming, and I'm too weak to push both myself and my luggage up a hill. I went with a touring company, America by Bicycle, instead. I highly recommend them. Their website's www.abbike.com. It doesn't look professional, but it's run by a bunch of cyclists who know what they're doing.

(But given the nature of this site, I wish I could post something really intellectual or otherwise related to hacking instead.)

-----

Addenda:

very frequently asked questions: What was the mileage per day? About 80 miles. The shortest day was 38 miles, the longest was 120.

What was the group size? About 50. The average age was 58, which surprised me. I expected to see a bunch of retired people, but I was the only recent college grad. The youngest person was a girl who had just graduated from high school; the oldest was an 80 year old man.

What was your fitness level prior to the ride? I ran at the gym for maybe 10 minutes, perhaps every other week. I was not especially fit, had never done any sports and was generally unathletic. Imagine my surprise when the tour booklet came two and a half months before I was to leave, recommending a year of training prior to the ride. =( Anyway, I put in about 1000 miles of training in those two and a half months. I was so afraid they would kick me out for being unfit that I didn't even dare ask them if they had that policy, lest it be true. It was pretty dumb of me to worry, in retrospect, since they'll just pick you up in a van if you can't make it to the next checkpoint, but I wanted the trip so badly that I avoided the thought of failure as much as possible.

How fast did you ride? The strongest riders probably averaged 20 mph. I think the 80 year old man averaged 12-13 mph in the hilly places like Oregon. He was terribly slow at going up hills, but the descents made up for it a bit. I started out averaging 11-12 mph, but with lots of help and mentoring I moved up to 14-16, depending on the terrain and wind.

cgs• 17 years ago

Congratulations! I'd highly recommend this to anyone with a few spare months.

charlesju• 17 years ago

That sounds pretty amazing actually.

BobbyH• 17 years ago

How much weight did you lose on the trip? Did you also lose weight from the training? [This sounds amazing. I bet you got a lot of Forrest Gump jokes, though.]

zasz4• 17 years ago

I actually gained weight, surprisingly. I'm 5'3" and weighed in somewhere around 106 or 107 pounds before the trip, and now I weigh 109.5. (Just enough to finally donate blood, I hope.) The other women on the trip kept a pretty constant weight, though I think I am the only one who actually gained weight. One guy started out around 260 pounds and lost at least 16.

I didn't lose any weight from training, probably because I didn't train enough.

yan• 17 years ago

Awesome! I'm planning a ride from DC to NY this September. Not exactly across the US, but it'll be my longest ride.

wallflower• 17 years ago

Congratulations! It sounds like a crazy interesting trip. What was the best part of the trip? Who were the (mostly older) individuals who did the trip with you and what were they like? Close but not intimate or good friends? Did you have time to go off on your own?

zasz4• 17 years ago

Definitely the people. I thought that it would be all about the sightseeing and the cycling, but since the company sets the route and they care more about keeping you en route and safe from cars, sightseeing opportunities are limited, and of course, vast swathes of the country are just boring corn and soybean fields. The cycling turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be since I didn't really know how to maintain the right posture to keep my butt and shoulders from aching for the first couple weeks, but once I figured that out, it became pretty fun.

But I think I discovered a lot of role models on the trip (I'm only 21). Surprisingly, this is only the second group of people where I've felt like I've fit in really well. A few people adopted me as a sort of surrogate daughter, and I've become really good friends with them.

Most of the people were quite well to do--we had a lot of retired engineers, doctors, and a real estate lawyer. We had a couple crazy wealthy people, but they behaved like anyone else. On the whole, they were very gracious people, very kind, and generally good-natured. Some of them acted like they were 60 or 70 or whatever, and some of them could have fit in at a frat party if they looked younger.

I didn't really have time to go off on my own much. I really sucked for the first four or five weeks, and I barely came to the next motel in time for a shower and the overview of the next day's route. Also, they usually put us up in motels located in strip malls, so we were often a couple miles away from downtown. Even if I'd been inclined to get back onto my bike, urban riding is still something I don't want to do if I don't have to. Even if you're a strong rider who's able to fit in side trips and still get back in time, the sightseeing opportunities are limited.

lyime• 17 years ago

Wow. I find the idea of driving around the country a bit much. You biked, thats pretty amazing. You need a beer, or two.

matthew-wegner• 17 years ago

Nice! There are also companies that sell bike maps if you want to try your own execution with someone else's planning.

I recently unicycled 300 miles across Africa. Photos here: http://www.matthewwegner.com/africa-unicycle-photos/

This was a vehicle-supported tour organized by Escape Adventures, who are absolutely awesome. They usually do bike tours; this was their first unicycle tour. I'd highly recommend them for any foreign tours: http://escapeadventures.co.nz/

davidw2• 17 years ago

I think even for an in-shape cyclist, having a van to carry your stuff would be nice. I've ridden with a loaded down bike before, and it's kind of depressing: your formerly light, agile Ferrari gets turned into something with the handling characteristics of a dump truck.

nwatson• 17 years ago

technically, helped build products http://www.sensage.com and http://www.zenprise.com ... two very good software development experiences with some great development (and business) teams.

Mz5• 17 years ago

Got myself well when that's not supposed to be possible. Now living my life-long dream of a "normal" life: working for the weekend, saying things like "TGIF" and doing other ordinary working stiff type things.

trapper3• 17 years ago

How and from what (if it's ok to ask)

Mz5• 17 years ago

What: After spending 3 1/2 months bedridden, I was diagnosed in May 2001 with "atypical cystic fibrosis" in my mid-thirties. Doctors blamed my condition on my genes. I figured there had to be more to it than that.

How: I have a small website that attempts to answer that question: http://www.healthgazelle.com

To sum up my point of view: White people are more vulnerable to sunburn than darker-skinned people but "pale skin disorder" does not doom you to be chronically sunburned to the point of peeling and does not doom you to die at an early age of skin cancer. Similarly, cystic fibrosis makes one more vulnerable to infection, but one does not have to accept being sick all the time as their only fate. It takes both pale skin and sunlight to cause sunburn. It takes both CF and germs to make one deathly ill. The environmental and lifestyle part is what we can control. So far, so good.

p01nd3xt3r2• 17 years ago

Developed a sales forecasting algorithm that turned out to be within 5% of actual sales numbers over a 18 month period.

Note: I don't know how its performing now because I switched jobs.

jpwagner• 17 years ago

Would you mind talking about this with me?

jpwagner [at> mit <dotty] edu

Thanks!

jbr• 17 years ago

Isn't it weird leaving that sort of thing behind? I also built a "purchase prediction model" right before I left a startup. It did really well on the test portion of the data (which wasn't included when building the model), but I have no idea how it's performing in the wild. It's stranger than leaving something like a program that has a clear function, because it's not necessarily obvious how well the model is performing compared to how well it "could" be performing.

Have you thought about getting ahold of them to find out how it performs now, just for curiosity's sake?

p01nd3xt3r2• 17 years ago

Actually yes it was weird and kind of sad because the developers that I left to maintain it are kind of morons (IMHO).

I never really considered asking them how it was doing now; I have been so busy working on other projects but I would like to know.

Mankhool• 17 years ago

Thanks for the boost on my YC application. When I was in university I made a short film and sold it to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and it aired nationally.

Keyframe2• 17 years ago

Can it be viewed somewhere online or otherwise?

darwinw• 17 years ago

Single handedly created http://Tripntale.com

Cantdog• 17 years ago

A spaceship sends messages to a logging system I built

(That's the coolest way I could phrase interning at NASA)

bgnm2000• 17 years ago

I created a website that 3/4 of my college started using - and still uses now that I'm gone - solely through word of mouth.

menumunchies.com - for those interested

dmfdmf2• 17 years ago

Lead systems engineer for ABWR Feedwater Control System Units 1 & 2, Lungmen Nuclear Power Station in Taiwan. Designed it 10yrs ago, just going online now.

http://www.power-technology.com/projects/lungmen/

sketerpot• 17 years ago

That's about 14 million tons of carbon dioxide that won't be going into the atmosphere every year. Not too shabby!

mkramlich3• 17 years ago

great job! and please tell us it doesn't run Windows

dmfdmf2• 17 years ago

"No Comment"

edw519• 17 years ago

I made my mother laugh when nothing else could. Everything else I have ever achieved is a distant second.

zkz• 17 years ago

I personally have a problem finding my most impressive achievement not impressive at all from the instant it's done. Anyone else?

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Yes, I know exactly what you mean. It's intensely demotivating - all I can advise is a supportive partner and friends, and occasional professional help.

_cbsz3• 17 years ago

I actually had a lot of trouble with too much ego boost in the days after. I hope I'll handle the next impressive achievement more modestly.

modoc• 17 years ago

Built 10MinuteMail.com to learn Seam. The site now gets over 100,000 hits/day.

Started Sparkred.com and have been profitable while competing against much larger established players.

Built a woodshed that didn't fall over from the snow last winter. Built a closet that makes my wife happy. Built a desk that makes me happy.

Keyframe2• 17 years ago

Persuaded my girlfriend to be with me.

mofey3• 17 years ago

nick007• 17 years ago

that got a vote out of jealousy

davidw2• 17 years ago

That rings true with me. I've done some cool hacks here and there, but marrying an intelligent, beautiful woman, and having a wonderful daughter are pretty high up on the list for someone who wasn't always terribly well adapted, socially.

In terms of hacks, the thing I like the most is Hecl: http://www.hecl.org

mahmud• 17 years ago

I got my father $80k to pay the IRS within 48 hours. At the time, I was 21 years old, making $6/hr working full time at starbucks, and was in a bachelor house with other college kids. He called me and said I could go to the office and take the fridge, TV and whatever else I liked, because there will be nothing left of it by January 7th, first federal working day, and IRS was coming to take it all. They already froze his accounts and step-mom packed her stuff and left for Canada.

I called him from the office to ask him for the password so I can check my email. I played some music, stood there and decided to take a look at his business software. The rest was history. We did a lot of apologizing to people later, and we lost 5% of our clients, but the feds where paid, we kept the family business, and we paid people back within a month.

Since then, I have fucked up and fucked up big. Me and him fought repeatedly. He disapproved of my life choices and sometimes we didn't talk for weeks, but STILL, every time I screw up he tells me I am a very gifted screw-up and loves me very much.

clistctrl• 17 years ago

you skipped over the best part... how did you do it?

tobych• 17 years ago

A small proportion of data from four spaceships send data that is decompressed by my code. Oh, and I found a bug in code in the the same spaceships.

Wrote an spreadsheet, and interactive disassembler, in BBC BASIC and 6502 assembler when I was sixteen. Still seems the most impressive thing I ever did... but perhaps it wasn't actually. Um ah.

javanix• 17 years ago

It wasn't really overly special - but I built and debugged a full web app from the ground up including MySQL backend, (simple) scripting language, and design/logic in about a month on deadline earlier this summer.

pingswept• 17 years ago

I converted a Porsche 914 to electric power. http://www.evalbum.com/573.html

manish• 17 years ago

That's a neat hack

kvs• 17 years ago

"invented" something small but useful in CS. Won some reserach competition, got invited to the Turing Award ceremoney, got an award on the same stage right after Vincent Cerf and Rob Khan got thier Turing Award. Goose bumps :-)

dansdans• 17 years ago

So what was it? So intriguing.

jubos• 17 years ago

got ie6 and ie7 running on the same windows install.

terpua2• 17 years ago

Was temporarily paralyzed from neck down (it seemed permanent at the time) from a major car accident but managed to crack jokes with the paramedics on the way to ICU.

Ended up with fractured C3 to C5 and ripped ligaments and had 2 major operations and a halo device. I was 15 yo.

mofey3• 17 years ago

I'm hearing about people around me getting into serious accidents. Aren't seat belts and air bags supposed to prevent these kind of injuries?

terpua2• 17 years ago

I was in the back seat with my seat belt strapped. And seat belts / air bags will not prevent serious injuries 100% of the time.

mkramlich3• 17 years ago

Hard to compete with some of the great things accomplished by others here (spaceships, businesses, businesses that process logs from spaceships while cycling around the country in spaceships while making your mother laugh about a nuclear power plant you helped build that hopefully does not run Windows, etc.), BUT I'll try anyway and throw out my Dead By Zombie game (http://DeadByZombie.com), whose Windows port just launched last week. It has a Rogue-like UI style but is otherwise very different from a Rogue-like in terms of play style and goals. I tend to develop several new hobby projects each year from scratch, outside my day job in software development, and then release them and try to monetize them in various ways. By HN standards, probably pretty simple and unimpressive.

I think it's just good to be creative and productive. By my standards, it's impressive to be doing things like this rather than merely sitting around watching TV or making inane chit-chat at bars, like so many Americans seem to do. (Though there's value in doing even those in moderation.)

Live, love, think, create, do, repeat. A life full of that is what impresses me.

thomanil• 17 years ago

Found my Better Half. Fathered my daughter. Built v.1 of http://thoughtmuse.com singlehandedly on nights and weekends, in under five months (as estimated).

_cbsz3• 17 years ago

Found remotely-exploitable security vulnerabilities in China's no-longer-mandated Green Dam censorware, resulting in my first Slashdotting: http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/pub/gd

HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=654107

wlievens2• 17 years ago

Built a webgame that has had a small (400 users) but very dedicated following for over four years.

kvogt• 17 years ago

cracked a safe with a robot http://web.mit.edu/kvogt/www/safecracker.html

richardw• 17 years ago

Once designed and created a system to manage very complex ethnobotanical information, so we could define rules like "X company reserves all samples taken from Q parts of plants that might be related to people speaking Y language from Z area using words that hint at it helping their stomach."

Another system - "it must tell us everything about e.g. nanotechnology and Japan". Recognised countries, technologies, projects, did implicit search on internal document databases, internal project databases, CIA world factbook, stored URL's, Google's API etc. Showed links, e.g. team X went to Japan in 2004, team Y dealt with nanotech in 2001, there are two reports here that deal with X, Bob stored these related URL's, etc.

May not impress some, but I really enjoyed those projects and they were helluva challenging!

fsniper• 17 years ago

filmed our friend for his proposal to his girl friend and merged in a Hollywood movie. The interesting part is making him - who does not know any English - read English. He could not manage to read and look into the camera at the same time so I cut a hole in the paper and put the paper around the camera. :)

geuis• 17 years ago

Hacked the Google VPN client that was released a few years ago to work with non google pptp networks. Did that within a couple days of it being released. Not the most impressive but it was fun.

stewiecat2• 17 years ago

Took 2.5 hours of my Ironman triathlon time. Went from a 15 hour race to a 12.5 hour race, which I managed to repeat last year.

ssanders822• 17 years ago

Awesome man, what were your swim/bike/run splits?

stewiecat2• 17 years ago

1:14 swim (5 minutes faster than first) 6:13:55 bike (way faster than the first, like over an hour and change) 4:43 run (about 45-50 minutes faster than the first)

First was Wisconsin, second was Lake Placid.

dcminter• 17 years ago

Learnt to dance.

Ok, I'm still learning (and always will be) but I went from absolutely hating dancing to being a competent social swing dancer in a year - just coming up to the anniversary of my first lesson in fact.

NoBSWebDesign• 17 years ago

I built a predictive model for finding the maximum temperatures of the core components of heavy-duty alternators, which cut the alternator testing cycle for the biggest Tier 1 automotive supplier in the world down from 3 months to about a day and a half. Two PhD's had been trying for 2 years before me to accomplish this. It was meant to be an educational exercise, but last I heard, they were still using it to get new business.

happymonkey00• 17 years ago

Helped build a cardiovascular diagramming system that converts diagnostic(textual) reports of kids with congenital heart defects to "circuit diagrams" of the heart annotated with various cardiovascular measurements.

ssanders822• 17 years ago

After months and months of late-night coding sessions, created http://www.howmucharestamps.com

mrlyc2• 17 years ago

I wrote a bulletin board in 1984 on a Commodore Vic20. It had public and private rooms (message areas), private mail and an online game, all in 9.6K of BASIC. Users could start their own rooms and make them public or private. I ran it on the Vic for six months then rewrote it in Turbo Pascal and ran it for eighteen months on an XT clone with 384K (I couldn't afford the full 640) and one floppy. There was no hard drive. The board was very popular. Each user spent an average of 70 minutes on it.

mrlyc2• 17 years ago

Rewrote 2,650 lines of C as a seven line shell script. The previous programming team had written a data transfer program using their own implementation of ftp. I just used the one that was already on the computer.

Gibbon• 17 years ago

I set 52 national records, tied a world record and won a category at the nationals in model aircraft competitions when I was 15. Two of the records were set at a contest on a sat and I won the nationals at another contest on sunday.. the two contests were 1000 miles apart.

Ask HN: What is something impressive you have built or achieved?

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