From zero to Tetris in C over an hour.

Some guy goes from a fresh install of XP in a virtual machine,
through downloading and installing MinGW and a favorite text editor,
through drawing blocks in Paint and writing a resource script,
through making a do-nothing window in C with the basic Win32 API,
through displaying a block and making it react to keypresses,
through adding natural gravity and line clearing:
ending up with a functional skeleton of a Tetris game.
In just over an hour.

Also, he's Japanese. And this video has half a million views.

http://nicoviewer.net/sm8517855

Or if you're some kind of nerd with a Nico account:

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm8517855

>>5
They document it, but considering the amount of errors I've encountered just in the English D3D9 documentation, I don't think it's being done "painstakingly".