1. Multiple monitor support for the Macintosh II. This was a couple weeks of work (described to me as "five days, five hundred lines of code") with little support from management because of ship pressure. Result: /lots/ of people with more than one video card (ka-ching!) and monitor (ka-CHING!) for the next decade or so.

2. Again with Apple: The folks who decided to define a native code extension system for Hypercard; a simple system that spawned a small industry in custom XCMDs. I say "folks" here, but HC was a really small team, and it was probably just one guy.

There are a couple others that come to mind, but I'm under NDA on them.

Interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Can you talk about the times you've seen it done. Because I haven't, and I'd love to hear more.

Tell that to the guy who invented bitcoin, etc.

Programming gives you an almost infinite leverage.

Now if you attack a problem that doesn't interest you, maybe the problem is not in programming but in the topic you chose.

I second this so much. Please write it up.