With all due respect to Bob Fitch, I think you're overly romanticizing here. He wasn't starting from absolute zero. He was heavily refactoring the existing engine and bringing in improvements from the Diablo engine, which was being finished up at the same time.
It's still a very impressive technical achievement to rewrite a game engine like that, I just don't think it qualifies as "finished software" in the way this thread intends that phrase to mean...
edit: in fairness your post wasn't talking about finished software per se; I still feel it's inaccurate to call starcraft.exe a one-person creation.
It's still a very impressive technical achievement to rewrite a game engine like that, I just don't think it qualifies as "finished software" in the way this thread intends that phrase to mean...
edit: in fairness your post wasn't talking about finished software per se; I still feel it's inaccurate to call starcraft.exe a one-person creation.