Celebrating the independent developers
In a world where the resilience of cross-functional teams prevails and hero cultures are rightfully criticised, I thought it would be interesting to examine the other end of the spectrum.
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If you’d like to support the growth of this resource, consider upgrading to paid and take advantage of the other ways I can help you.As a CTO and now CTO coach, I believe in the power of software product development teams. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” encapsulates the resilience that teams can bring. Whether that be resilience in backing each other up when one is unavailable or the resilience that comes from having complementary skills to quickly and effectively handle whatever comes the team’s way, software teams are a great solution to many of the challenges CTOs face.
For software teams to work well, it often means disassembling the structures that support the hero culture. This may have helped them survive as a startup where funds were very limited and individuals wearing many hats and pulling off feats of endurance were par for the course.
As a result, there is almost an overcorrection, where the achievements of individual developers are overlooked, and the role they played in helping businesses find viability in the early days of their existence is somewhat overlooked.
When I thought about the technologists who have impressed me over the years with the innovative products they built, primarily by themselves, I found it quite surprising how many were lone wolves who tenaciously followed an idea wherever it took them. There’s an interesting tension between having a clear goal and experimenting with adequate freedom to make novel discoveries.
In many cases, they demonstrated expertise in more than just programming and exercised various skills to build their products and businesses. I decided to dedicate this blog post to celebrating some of these individuals.
But first, I’d like to explore why I think it is essential to examine closely the opposite of commonly held norms.
Why is it important to understand when individuals succeed over teams?
In design, exploring the opposite of the desired result is known as inversion or embracing opposites. It’s important to acknowledge that there is always a spectrum of approaches, and for specific contexts, something significantly different from the norm may be called for.
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
— Niels Bohr, Pioneering physicist behind atomic structure and quantum theory
Environmental changes can also shift the predominant practices that often lead to success. The environment we are in, whether the market, consumer trends, preferences, or other factors, can eventually shift what works. We see shifts between centralisation and decentralisation, specialisation and generalisation and many other aspects.
How might AI shift the balance between team and solo work?
For an example of something that could significantly impact teamwork and solo work, we are waiting to see what the effects of more fluid, human-like reasoning might have on software development. Whilst I suspect we may fall short of the ideals described in the definitions of Artificial General Intelligence, we are seeing practical use of AI by businesses (and a lot of bad examples, as I covered in this post). I also find myself using AI-enhanced tools more often in my work. It can be true there’s a bubble and utility, and changes are affecting our industry all at once.
I am observing another example of the change manifesting. If you call the customer support of many banks now, you may find yourself talking with synthetic humans. They aren’t intelligent in how we think of humans, but they have access to much of the information we seek and respond in a human-like way to serve many of the most common requests. We may not like it, but it is happening, and some use cases appear to be proving viable.
I mention all this to set the scene for a potential seesaw back towards individuals achieving more alone. That doesn’t mean the resilience of working in teams goes away; it is just that the feasibility of working alone may increase for a while. I don’t know that this will happen. It’s more about being open to the possibility.
Even before the explosion of tooling, which helped individuals be productive, individuals achieved some amazing feats in software through talent and perseverance alone. In these cases, it may have been more about necessity or a desire to engage in various modes of expression. Let’s review some examples of people whose stories I am familiar with and see what we might learn about creating valuable software.
This is a quick disclaimer: My list does not seek to be the definitive list of solo creations or independent developers. You can find such lists on Reddit and other places if you are looking for them. This list is autobiographical—these are all software that was important to me at various points throughout my life and that I came to know was produced by a solo engineer. The representation of the list is male-skewed, which may reflect something about society and the conditions where people feel they can take the risk of creating independently and other factors. Also to note, whilst many of these software remained independent creations in some cases, later on, others joined them to evolve that software due to its success, but it started with the independent creator, and they made fantastic progress on their own, so they stay on the list. If you have your examples, please share them in the comments.
The list of independent creators
Here is my list:
Homesite - Nick Bradbury
Prince of Persia - Jeremy Mechner
EXT JS - Jack Slocum
Return of the Obra Dinn - Lucas Pope
AMOS - Francois Lionet
Doom / Quake engines - John Carmack
Tiny Glade - Anastasia Opara
RVbbit - Ryan Robitaille
Alone in the Park - Katharine Neil
Homesite - Nick Bradbury
I tried almost every editor available in the early years of the modern web. One I stuck with for years was Homesite (which later became Allaire Homesite) by Nick Bradbury. As the web evolved, so did the editor, and I found myself paying close attention to the release updates as Nick released new versions. What I appreciated about Homesite was the care that was put into the product's user experience, and this aspect helped it become my chosen editor for many years. It was powerful but never overwhelming.
I probably paid very close attention to how editors were designed due to my involvement with Hotdog, another web creation tool that once claimed the mantel of the world’s most popular HTML editor, another independent developer creation - Steven Outtrim, and also my time as a producer of Splash!, which may have been the first what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) webpage editor.
When I briefly moved into ColdFusion and Spectra development while working at Virtual Communities, it felt fortunate that Homesite became the default editor in that ecosystem and was closely integrated with those tools. I had a steep learning curve with those platforms, which we used to build a large content portal over a single summer, so at least I was already familiar with the integrated development environment (IDE), which was a modified version of Homesite.
Nick also wrote the successful TopStyle and FeedDemon, two other products I used for a significant period. However, Nick has since ceased to be an independent creator, and he explains why in his blog.
Another tidbit I learned during my research for this post was that Nick also started with computer games - a curious thread running through my selections and also a pitstop in my technology career.
Nick’s blog has some fascinating insights, including the moments when he saw the value in practices that supported teamwork after coming from years of working solo.
Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner
A game I loved to play in my youth was Prince of Persia. I wasn’t particularly good at it, which involved frustration, as my lack of dexterity led to my character perishing. Still, I loved the story, the art style, and the smooth, cartoon-like animation, unlike anything else I was aware of at the time.
In recent years, Jordan Mechner has been sharing logs and, later, a book, The Making of the Prince of Persia, which I found fascinating. What captures my interest most is the range of skills and problems to solve across many disciplines. He has also released a couple of other books, including one documenting his time creating Karateka (which also catches my interest as a possible example of simultaneous invention along with others such as the International Karate franchise, of which I played IK on the Commodore 64 and IK+ on the Amiga and also the Way of the Exploding Fist, which I don’t think I ever played but was published by Melbourne House, where I worked for several years) and a few other unpublished games.
Jordan also wrote a graphic novel version of Prince of Persia around the time the film was released and self-published The Last Express, which has an engaging rotoscoped visual aesthetic and investigatory play mechanic.
We are fortunate he kept so many journal and storyboard artefacts from these periods to get this detailed insight into his work.
EXT JS - Jack Slocum
When I was working at Hitwise, we faced the challenge of being at the bleeding edge of what was available to support a good user experience on web platforms. This was before the popularity of Google Analytics, but as a consumer behaviour analytics tool, we knew our users wanted to slice and dice the data we provided, and interactive dashboards, charting, and dynamic data tables enabled our users to get to the data they needed and to present it to tell the stories they wanted to tell.
We knew if we could use third-party libraries such as Yahoo’s YUI user interface library, we could stay focused on our core. However, we often found what we needed was unavailable, so we open-sourced our extensions to this library.
The pace at which all of this was moving was exciting. We often, as a team, might be stuck on a challenging problem of how to get Javascript and the browser DOM to achieve something one day and then come in the next day and find someone like Dustin Diaz, who struggled with and solved the same problem on the other side of the world overnight.
The need to do this was reduced with the release of EXT JS, which started as a modest set of extensions to YUI and eventually became its own standalone, extensive library of user interface components. We followed the work of Jack Slocum closely; his work actively reduced our need to invest in this area and instead invented on top of his components to address the needs of our users more directly. Eventually, Jack built the Sencha business around his library and engaged others in its development, but what he achieved as an independent was staggering.
Return of the Obra Dinn - Lucas Pope
One of my favourite games of the past few years is Return of the Obra Dinn, created by Lucas Pope. Lucas also made the excellent game Papers, Please.
The game has at its heart a simple puzzle concept. The ship has returned to port, and its crew appear to have all perished. You are an insurance adjuster aboard to investigate what happened to all the crew. Through a combination of exploring the ship, an incredibly detailed 3D model, and some cutscenes of the prior events, you are tasked with trying to identify a timeline of events and determine the fates of each passenger. You might find an initial in a crew member's sleeping quarters or hear a reference to a first name, and by process of elimination, you can identify them one by one. The story of what happened and how it is revealed is so richly realised you find yourself immersed in the world Lucas Pope has created.
Lucas has shared some developer diaries of his work as videos on his YouTube channel, which are fascinating to watch. These include time-lapse recordings of creating the models or coding the logic for how an arm reaches for a door handle and opens it.
AMOS - Francois Lionet
I was visiting Westfield Doncaster Shoppingtown (in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), affectionately known as ‘shoppo’ by locals, once with my parents, up on the top floor of the Myer department store, when I spotted a demo on a computer display advertising AMOS, the game creation programming language. It took further research across Amiga magazines to determine where I could purchase AMOS. From memory, it involved a purchase through the post, and eventually, a boxed copy arrived in the mail. I was beyond excited but didn’t realise how formative that discovery was.
I later discovered more about the creator of this incredible tool, Francois Lionet, who had developed a similar tool for the Atari ST, which he called STOS. He then turned his attention to the Amiga, which had become wildly successful and developed the next generation of that tool, which he called AMOS. I spent years creating things in AMOS and writing code in AMOS BASIC. I created animations for videos I submitted for school projects, made games, and experimented with programming, sound, music, animation, and more.
One of the highlights of each month was receiving the paper newsletter in the mail, which contained information about AMOS and amazing ten-line code demonstrations, which I eagerly typed out, viewed, and then endlessly hacked upon.
Doom / Quake engines - John Carmack
I used to follow John Carmack’s work on Doom and Quake via his pre-blogging age blog, which you could read by making a finger request to his ID. John did work with a team, but the engines for the ID software games were as influential as the games themselves and can be almost considered standalone creations in their own right. These engines spawned a whole industry of companies building games and mods on top of them.
I once interviewed him for a university assignment, and he dutifully answered my questions, which I will always appreciate.
A few sections of John’s wikipedia page caught my attention:
Carmack subscribes to the philosophy that small, incremental steps are the fastest route to meaningful and disruptive innovation.[30] He compares this approach to the "magic of gradient descent" where small steps using local information result in the best outcomes. According to Carmack, this principle is proven by his own experience, and he has observed this in many of the smartest people in the world. He states, "Little tiny steps using local information winds up leading to all the best answers."[30]
And this one about his time working at Meta:
Carmack was vocal about his frustration with the bureaucratic inefficiencies he encountered during his time at Meta.[33] In his departure memo, he stated, "We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort," he wrote. "I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it."[34]
Tiny Glade - Anastasia Opara
I felt fortunate to catch some early tweets by then-independent creator Anastasia Opara about her experiments with proceduralism. Those experiments evolved into a hit ‘cozy’ game, Tiny Glade. I read today that it has already had over 500,000 users in a few weeks since its launch. Like similar cozy games such as Townscaper, the gameplay is purely about creation. There’s no objective beyond creation and no winning beyond seeing what you come up with.
I recently purchased the full game, and my son and I have been enjoying its almost infinite creation potential.
It's hard to know how long Anastasia worked as an independent creator; I am piecing together what I can from interviews. Her influence on the game is unquestionable - review her prior talks and publications, such as the five tutorials on proceduralism she created.
Before TinyGlade was released, Anastasia joined forces with a former colleague and formed Pouncelight to get the game finished and produced. A team of two is not your typical software product team, and I suspect the calculus of ‘go far, go together’ is likely factored in. Her business partner and fellow creator also possessed polymathic talents, complementing Anastasia’s various skills across disciplines.
RVbbit - Ryan Robitaille
I’ve previously covered Ryan’s work in a post about one of his technology experiments, Rabbit Remix. Ryan has since released his flagship product, RVbbit, the culmination of his many experiments, including Data Rabbit, CanvaSQL, and the Rabbit Remix tech demo. This platform's capabilities are extensive, and I am enjoying experimenting with it.
There is something exciting about what is possible through experimentation. It’s not like Ryan was without aim; he had something in mind about how work could flow and enable people working with data to be extremely productive and to be able to follow thoughts as they discovered things. Something interesting about the long-term, loosely defined goals is that he may have even more feelings about what was possible and the nearer-term things he chose to achieve in any given day or over a month or two.
There’s also something interesting about the flow state he worked in to achieve as much as he has over the past few years. I will note that the platform is not entirely intuitive, but fortunately, Ryan has recorded dozens of videos demonstrating all of RVbbit’s concepts. I’ve found a joyful discovery experience of following along with the videos and experimenting with the platform as I go. There’s an exciting reflection of the experiential discovery process he went through building the platform that users also go through in learning to use it this way.
I also note some similarities with the ideas present in Tiny Glade, where experimentation with the platform can lead to discoveries and combinations. Simple ideas build upon one another to combine in sophisticated, powerful and even unanticipated ways.
Alone in the Park - Katharine Neil
Within my friendship circles are some independent creators, such as the multi-talented Katharine Neil, who designed, scripted, coded, composed, performed and sang in the game Alone in the Park.
I met Katharine years ago while working at Beam Software / Melbourne House and later discovered she was my future wife's housemate and schoolmate. It's a small world, but I wouldn’t want to be responsible for painting it. I am always impressed with how she blends her talents.
Katharine was also the narrative designer for the well-received Astrologaster.
Notable mentions
NGINX - Igor Sysoev
Node.js - Ryan Dahl
Jquery - John Resig
Javascript - Brendan Eich
OBS - Hugh “Jim” Bailey
Banished - Luke Hodorowicz
Sublime Text Editor - Jon Skinner
Notepad++ - Don Ho
RollerCoaster Tycoon - Chris Sawyer
StarDew Valley - Eric Barrone
Firebug - Joe Hewitt
Perl - Larry Wall
Python - Guido Van Rossum
Note G - Ada Lovelace
Do you have any independent developers who you have found inspirational? Who were they, and what did they create? Why do you think their story interests you? Share your examples in the comments.
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