Our companies main product family was mostly developed by me.
There are multiple schools and apartment buildings for example that would lack heating, running water and sewers were my contribution to be removed from them.
I personally programmed all of the robots that weld together the frames of every Nissan pickup truck except for diesel models made after 2016. I also did the same for any Ford f-350 to f-650 built after 2017.
Your username doesn’t make me feel awesome about getting in a Nissan or Ford built after 2016.
I produced and edited a short video reassuring people of the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines during the height of the pandemic. It was an independent project me and a few concerned friends did purely because we really felt passionate about it. The site we made associated with + the video had well over 10,000 views and visitors.
Nothing earth shattering but I’m very proud of that work and I like to believe it maybe helped a few people make the right decision to vaccinate themselves/their families, as well as maybe informed people who then convinced their friends and family.
That must be the Linux kernel.
I was senior UxD on the most popular screenshotting software from around 2002-2012 with more than 10 million users, on windows and Mac (I designed the 1.0 Mac interface). It’s software many of you have likely used, especially if you’ve ever done documentation.
I was also the designer and DbA for two of the largest government grant programs in the early 2000s, including management software for dept of education and dept of justice.
But my most significant project was definitely my son. Releasing a whole person makes everything else pale by comparison. He’s nearly 30 now, and I’m very proud of him.
30 years ago, I was a young research student on the project to synthesize an injectable form of birth control. I was responsible for isolating proteins using column chromatography.
Front line tech during the Y2K crisis. I had 60 software updates to manage across 600 car dealerships from Texas to Guam.
The real trick was convincing everyone to do it early because the '00 model year cars were coming out in '98 and '99 and could have broken a lot of things.
“Y2K? That’s months from now!”
“When do you get your '00 cars?”
“Next week.”
“Do you want to be able to sell them?”
“!!” (Metal Gear Solid noise)
Interesting design choice to store the model year as a date instead of an int. I guess it was probably done for a reason but I’m having a hard time thinking of one.
Major event, minor indirect connection
About 20 years ago my spouse was invited by the Canadian government to participate in a citizen forum on what Canada should do with its nuclear waste. She went on a plane and was booked into a hotel and fed for 3 days, all paid for.
I mention this because there is finally some decisions being made and we were reminiscing.
Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap.
My exhaled co2 contributes to climate change
And that’s only the start of it. Think of all your vehicle emissions, and the land needed to sustain your diet!
But you didn’t get a say in your existence. Nobody has to apologize for being alive. And there are plenty of things we can do to minimize the impact and even affect things positively.
I agree with you, but it is an amusing premise - even if it is pretty inaccurate. Here’s some very quick figures.
The majority of the carbon the human body release is from breathing. Evidently it’s about 1 kg of co2 a day or so. All the people on earth combined exhale about 7% of emissions we create from fossil fuels. Even looking at something as small as lawncare, the numbers are super lopsided. Your average lawnmower produces about 40 kg CO2 per hour or use, so if you’re (un?)fortunate enough to live somewhere with a lawn, cutting it will produce more CO2 than you do.
I’ve contributed to PHP, one of the most widely used programming language on the web.
Felt really good to read someone else writing an explanation in the docs of what your contribution does.
Someone else wrote your documentation?
Lucky.
In university, I was involved in the first computer generated book ever published. It was a cooperation with Springer Nature a while before chatGPT
