paul lutus himself is an occasional hacker news commenter:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp</a>
I like the big Thoreau energy happening in this article. That said, vim was the vision of one (even that’s debatable) with the support of many and it’s far better than apple writer. The idea that the best software is the product of one or two is often touted and in my experience, never the case.
Reminds me of Joey Hess (joeyh.name).<p>That said, I think this take has aged poorly in light of recent history. For instance, Google was started as a small collaboration, but has since grown into an enormous company. Presumably, this growth was (at least initially) the natural result of finding that a couple people can only do so much. For another example, Sublime Text (a for profit text editor written by a small group of developers) is massively less popular than VS Code, which is the bloated work of a small army.
that was a fascinating read. here is another "interview with an extraterrestrial" writing from him<p><a href="https://arachnoid.com/lutusp/alien.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://arachnoid.com/lutusp/alien.html</a>