20 ms·

Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

551 points by krptos 10y ago

The one thing that keeps me inspired, more than anything, is following up with the activities of people whom I consider as masters. When it comes to programming, which developers do you closely follow? Please include blog/website/github links. A couple of my favourites: [TJ Holowaychuk](https://github.com/tj) - because he's a wizard. The number of premium open source projects he's been a part of, is just astounding. [Dan Abramov](https://github.com/gaearon) - First hit on his redux talk, then drifted to his blog posts. I like his clarity of expressing the why's and how's.

shellab 10y ago
[Dave Winer](http://scripting.com http://scripting.com)
osullivj 10y ago
I follow the legendary Jeff Vroom [1] and his stratacode project [2]. I was lucky enough to work with Jeff in the 90s, when he was architect of the AVS/Express visualisation system. He went on to Art Technology Group, then Adobe, and is now independent. AVS/Express had the best visual programming system I've ever used, and was way ahead of its time. [1] https://github.com/jeffvroom https://github.com/jeffvroom [2] https://github.com/stratacode https://github.com/stratacode
AdamGibbins 10y ago
Dan Luu: http://danluu.com/ http://danluu.com/
g3rv4 10y ago
[Nick Craver](http://nickcraver.com/ http://nickcraver.com/) and on twitter [@Nick_Craver](https://twitter.com/Nick_Craver https://twitter.com/Nick_Craver)
theparanoid 10y ago
Fabrice Bellard, http://www.bellard.org http://www.bellard.org
- mschaef 10y ago
  Seconded. This developer has an absolutely amazing output and corpus of works.
  - joe563323 10y ago
    very true. I just wish he gives some video interviews. Just would love to watch such an amazing productive guy.
unwind 10y ago
Meta: it's a bit funny when the article itself sets the lead by posting non-functional Markdown on this site. I see replies are joining in, too.
- yoz-y 10y ago
  Still, the beauty of markdown is that even if it does not get parsed, it is still legible.
LukeB_UK 10y ago
Beware of putting people on pedestals. Far better is to just follow people who do cool stuff. They don't have to be a "master" to do something cool that will inspire you.
- mseebach 10y ago
  It's a bit off-topic, but I keep coming back to this song, I find it very inspiring in its simplicity. "Try this at home" by Frank Turner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66knvY3vxsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66knvY3vxsA Key lines from the lyrics: In bedrooms across England // and all the Western world // there’s posters and there’s magazines // but the music isn’t ours So tear down the stars now // and take up your guitars // come on folks and try this at home Let’s stop waiting around // for someone to patronize us // Let’s hammer out a sound // that speaks of where we’ve been // Forget about the haircuts // the stupid skinny jeans // the stampedes and the irony // the media-fed scenes Do listen to the whole thing, it's a great song.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sapeien 10y ago
  Agree with this. I think that many of the people named here may be more talented at marketing their ideas and themselves within certain developer communities. Their work may seem popular and exciting, but are lost in abstract thought and have little to no connection to the real world. Rarely will you hear about the programmers who write software for the things people rely on every day, these are the unsung heroes.
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  Also: If you don't find your name on this thread, that doesn't mean that you're a nobody and that your work is unappreciated. It only means that the sort of folks who'd respond to a thread like this in earnest haven't noticed you, which probably isn't a reflection on your value to the {community, industry, world} (select appropriate).
  - 10y ago
jopacicdev 10y ago
coderabbi, https://twitter.com/coderabbi https://twitter.com/coderabbi
diyseguy 10y ago
Uncle Bob. https://cleancoders.com/ https://cleancoders.com/
lemiffe 10y ago
I've been putting together a list of hackers, bug hunters, star developers (or notably popular at the organisations they work for), and a few IT/OPSEC/SIGINT style companies (and aggregators). Still much work to be done, but feel free to check it out: https://twitter.com/lemiffe/lists/tophackers/members https://twitter.com/lemiffe/lists/tophackers/members
keymone 10y ago
https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub
- phyrex 10y ago
  Whenever Rich Hickey says something, I listen!
vanderZwan 10y ago
Fabien Sanglard knows how to do code reviews of old games in such a way that I feel like I understand what he wrote. Until I close the tab, of course. http://fabiensanglard.net/ http://fabiensanglard.net/
aelmeleegy 10y ago
I feel someone should include Marco Arment [twitter.com/arment] in this list. I don't know if he's a "master," but I have found his journey of building one-man projects to be inspiring. Also, Maciej Ceglowski [twitter.com/pinboard]. His twitter is hilarious, even though I don't personally subscribe to his service.
jcalabro 10y ago
Jon Blow: A game designer and programmer behind the popular titles "Braid" and "The Witness". He's currently working on making a new programming language and chronicling it on YouTube. - Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCuoqzrsHlwv1YyPKLuMDUQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCuoqzrsHlwv1YyPKLuMDUQ
- cableshaft 10y ago
  He's the main one I follow too, although I haven't kept up on his programming language progress (although I should get on that). He gives very interesting lectures though. I had the good fortune to see him give two in person at the Game Developer's Conference in 2008, and that was actually before I knew who he was and before Braid came out. He actually showed a tiny piece of Braid during the lecture, although it didn't hit me how clever it was until it was released and I got to see the whole thing. Still working through The Witness, but it's amazing. Put about 40 hours into it so far. It's the best video game I played last year.
  - jackmott 10y ago
    He did a couple of streams recently using his language to work on a new game. At the very least it will be C/C++ where you don't have to type () around if expressions. So there is that. :D
    - cableshaft 10y ago
      Cool, I'll definitely check those out. I am looking to start making video games again, although it seems like this is probably in too early of a state still, so I was planning on refreshing my knowledge of Unity. But it doesn't hurt to watch those streams, and I look forward to when it makes sense to do serious development in it.
- psyc 10y ago
  Every time I get stuck on a project, I watch this video. It's about games, but IMO a lot of it applies to software projects in general, especially MVPs. How to ship something that works before it collapses under its own complexity. I think the bit about remembering to optimize for developer effort is gold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjDsP5n2kSM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjDsP5n2kSM
Amorymeltzer 10y ago
Marco Arment, of tumblr, instapaper, Overcast, and ATP: https://marco.org/ https://marco.org/, https://twitter.com/marcoarment https://twitter.com/marcoarment Gary Bernhardt, of wat: https://github.com/garybernhardt https://github.com/garybernhardt, https://twitter.com/garybernhardt https://twitter.com/garybernhardt
- creativityhurts 10y ago
  You actually mean Gary Bernhardt of Destroy All Software https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts
0xFFC 10y ago
Steve https://twitter.com/steveklabnik https://twitter.com/steveklabnik He is awesome human being.
- Shicholas 10y ago
  def concur! coolest stranger on the Internet
- mingyeow 10y ago
  Yes, Steve is the best person on the internet indeed! Always outspoken, always protective, never nasty
  - ad_hominem 10y ago
    > always protective, never nasty Nobody's perfect https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/ https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/
    - steveklabnik 10y ago
      Yes, this is an incident I still regret deeply. I probably think about it once a week. It's one of the reasons that I'm a bit different these days than I am back then; I didn't want this to happen ever again.
      - Antithis 10y ago
        As far as I can tell you're just highly emotional.
        sctb 10y ago
        Please comment civilly and substantively on Hacker News—no personal attacks like this.
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  Thank you (and to everyone else in this thread) <3
merb 10y ago
ktoso: https://github.com/ktoso https://github.com/ktoso - he's not human, but If you want to do anything on the java/scala ecosystem, you need to follow him.
zamalek 10y ago
[Jeff Preshing](https://twitter.com/preshing https://twitter.com/preshing). He is a master of threading primitives. His CppCon talks are enlightening.
hunterjrj 10y ago
John Carmack https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack
gtrubetskoy 10y ago
I recommend following Donald Knuth, the late Richard Stevens, Brian Kernighan, Douglas Comer, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and many others I can't think of at the moment. By "follow" I mean read their books.
nazgob 10y ago
Gary Bernhardt, https://twitter.com/garybernhardt https://twitter.com/garybernhardt
mightybyte 10y ago
Lennart Augustsson http://ioccc.org/winners.html#Lennart_Augustsson http://ioccc.org/winners.html#Lennart_Augustsson https://github.com/augustss https://github.com/augustss
iansowinski 10y ago
Gary Bernhardt - https://twitter.com/garybernhardt https://twitter.com/garybernhardt He's making great screencasts in his copmpany!
queicherius 10y ago
Since you seem to be in the web area: - Addy Osmani https://github.com/addyosmani https://github.com/addyosmani - Paul Irish https://github.com/paulirish https://github.com/paulirish - Substack https://github.com/substack https://github.com/substack - Jeff Atwood https://blog.codinghorror.com/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/
- Hortinstein 10y ago
  I really like Substack's philosophy of development. It has stuck with me for a long time: https://gist.github.com/substack/5075355 https://gist.github.com/substack/5075355
sinamdar 10y ago
Peter Norvig. http://norvig.com http://norvig.com
chhib 10y ago
MPJ and his funfunfunction channel https://www.youtube.com/mpjmevideos https://www.youtube.com/mpjmevideos
- martijn_himself 10y ago
  Very talented guy- his 'musings' on development-related matters are worth a watch too.
justaman 10y ago
Ted Unangst BSD dev. http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/ http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/
martijn_himself 10y ago
Scott Hanselman. If you are a Microsoft / .NET developer he is probably at the top of your list. Pragmatic, fun, quality blog posts and produces really good podcasts. http://www.hanselman.com/ http://www.hanselman.com/
- teniutza 10y ago
  Scott's blog is one of my favourites. Even when it's not .NET related, it's always entertaining. That being said, I usually read Eric Lippert's blog (www.ericlippert.com) although, since he "switched dev environments", I find the topics less relevant (for me).
- hudo 10y ago
  But for .net the good ones are (from top of my head): Jimmy Bogard (marten, mediatr, general architecture) Jeremyd Miller (structuremap) Jeremy Skinner (fluentvalidation) K Scott Allen (typescript and genereal .net core) Mike Hadlow (.net core) Mark Rendle (.net on linux, funny guy) Jonathan Channon (nancyfx) Brad Wilson (xunit) Damien Edwards (.net core) Rick Strahl (.net core) Jon Galloway (javascript and .net) Leon Bambrick (very funny guy, knows everything)
- Yhippa 10y ago
  I'm not a MSFT/.NET guy and I still get a ton out of his content.
smallhands 10y ago
wait ..... john carmack, reason why i end up programming for a living
- rroriz 10y ago
  Same here. And he looks like a friend of mine.
nicolasMLV 10y ago
David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of Basecamp and Creator of Ruby on Rails https://www.twitter.com/dhh https://www.twitter.com/dhh
gjkood 10y ago
I know you didn't ask for books but here are some interesting ones. The first two cover individuals and the last two cover the works of others. Coders At Work (https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Programming/dp/1430219483/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485784938&sr=1-1&keywords=coders+at+work https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Program...) Founders At Work (https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1430210788/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1430210788&pd_rd_r=PRQTYC41ZVNCDJBEQW7X&pd_rd_w=4Mwie&pd_rd_wg=QQobP&psc=1&refRID=PRQTYC41ZVNCDJBEQW7X https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...) Architecture of Open Source Systems (https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Open-Source-Applications/dp/1257638017/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485785082&sr=1-1&keywords=architecture+of+open+source+applications https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Open-Source-Applications...) Architecture of Open Source Systems - Vol 2 (https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Open-Source-Applications-Ii/dp/1105571815/ref=pd_bxgy_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1105571815&pd_rd_r=BPJWPGEYPSN1MF9E9JHF&pd_rd_w=dc1Ss&pd_rd_wg=PNQE2&psc=1&refRID=BPJWPGEYPSN1MF9E9JHF https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Open-Source-Applications...)
coderjames 10y ago
Casey Muratori: https://mollyrocket.com/casey/ https://mollyrocket.com/casey/
yunolisten 10y ago
nowadays, none, thanks to restraining orders.
alexee 10y ago
Petr http://petr-mitrichev.blogspot.com/ http://petr-mitrichev.blogspot.com/
- codenut 10y ago
  are you a competitive programmer?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Davertron 10y ago
David Nolen - http://swannodette.github.io/ http://swannodette.github.io/ James Long - http://jlongster.com/ http://jlongster.com/ I follow these guys for similar reasons. They always seem to be a couple steps ahead of the rest of the industry and it's frankly a little embarrassing how productive they are. Come to think of it maybe I'd feel better about myself as a programmer if I stopped following them...
- thom 10y ago
  Agreed on David Nolen, although I regularly feel he doesn't know how much smarter than the average developer he is, and I find a lot of his work inscrutable from both the documentation and API standpoint.
  - sbensu 10y ago
    That impression goes away quickly when you meet him since he is a tremendously empathic person and clear speaker. The difference, in my opinion, is that he expects another level of effort/investment from the consumers of his work than other open source contributors. That mismatch often causes frustration from people that are not used to it. In my case, it quickly went away once I understood the implicit contract.
- Shicholas 10y ago
  I mean this in the most respectful way possible: David Nolen has a reached a level of enlightment the French describe as jouissance I will never achieve.
  - mej10 10y ago
    What makes you say that?
    - Shicholas 10y ago
      just the way he talks and simplifies FP in a way that previously has been impossible to achieve.
ploggingdev 10y ago
Julia Evans : https://jvns.ca https://jvns.ca Rachel : https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ Jeff Atwood : https://blog.codinghorror.com/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/ Joel Spolsky : https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ Dan Luu : https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/ patio11 : http://www.kalzumeus.com/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/
- koolba 10y ago
  While he has many an interesting read on SEO and business related topics in the field of software, what programming related content from patio11 are you referring to?
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    There has been some meta-related such as salary negotiations for programmers, the importance of A/B testing etc. Can't remember any code examples off the top of my head though.
  - ploggingdev 10y ago
    He does not write programming related blogs often, but there are some if you go to the archive (most are published before 2012) http://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ Recently he talked about building Stockfighter : http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/10/30/developing-in-stockfighter-with-no-trading-experience/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/10/30/developing-in-stockfight... http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/08/20/designing-and-building-stockfighter-our-programming-game/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/08/20/designing-and-building-s...
- BlackjackCF 10y ago
  I follow Julia on Twitter. She always has great drawings/hilarious stuff that she posts. It's really inspiring.
  - dubin 10y ago
    Yes! Julia's zines are an amazing way of communicating technical concepts https://jvns.ca/zines/ https://jvns.ca/zines/ Wish more people made them
deleted 10y ago
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Shicholas 10y ago
in addition to these great names I owe so much of my career to Yehuda Katz (https://twitter.com/wycats https://twitter.com/wycats) so much so that I'll probably terrify him with a giant hug if we were ever to meet in person.
flurdy 10y ago
Java Posse http://javaposse.com http://javaposse.com until the end. Even long after I had moved on from Java.
marvel_boy 10y ago
For iOS development Mattt Thompson @mattt For iOS animations Victor Baro @victorbaro
rajathagasthya 10y ago
Raymond Hettinger - https://twitter.com/raymondh https://twitter.com/raymondh David Beazley - https://twitter.com/dabeaz https://twitter.com/dabeaz Kenneth Reitz - https://github.com/kennethreitz https://github.com/kennethreitz
tbrock 10y ago
C: Salvatore Sanfillipo (antirez) Python: Kenneth Reitz JS: TJ Hollowaychuck C++: John Carmack Ruby: Aaron Patterson, _why
- VeejayRampay 10y ago
  What's common about all those programmers is that they're consistently nice people.
- deedubaya 10y ago
  @tenderlove does some revolutionary stuff. For example, one of his latest project has been to measure the weight his cats' poops. https://twitter.com/tenderlove/status/824322587379441664 https://twitter.com/tenderlove/status/824322587379441664 Came for the tech, stayed for the puns and generally odd behavior.
mrsmn 10y ago
David Beazley : http://www.dabeaz.com/ http://www.dabeaz.com/ Kenneth Reitz : https://www.kennethreitz.org/ https://www.kennethreitz.org/ Armin Ronacher : http://lucumr.pocoo.org/ http://lucumr.pocoo.org/ Julien Danjou : https://julien.danjou.info/ https://julien.danjou.info/ Hynek Schlawack : https://hynek.me/ https://hynek.me/ Donald Stufft : https://caremad.io/ https://caremad.io/
- santiagobasulto 10y ago
  found the Python guy
  - wineisfine 10y ago
    +
  - mrsmn 10y ago
    How'd you guess?
- kamyarg 10y ago
  I would like to also add Brett Cannon: https://snarky.ca https://snarky.ca His blog is very informative.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  I enjoy David Beazley's presentations. My mind is usually mush after watching, though. He makes the difficult look way to easy.
lj3 10y ago
Jonathan Blow (The Witness), Erich Ocean (Fohr), Howard Chu (LMDB), Dan Luu (BitFunnel) and Casey Muratori (Handmade Hero). These developers have a unique way of looking at problems. I've gained a lot of valuable knowledge from them.
ggregoire 10y ago
Some names from memory: - all the React team (Dan, Sebastian, Vjeux, Christoph, etc) - Addy Osmani (Google) - Sindre Sorhus (full time open sourcer) - JD Dalton (Lodash) - Guillermo Rauch (Zeit) - Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow) - Elon Musk (genius)
dustingetz 10y ago
Rich Hickey (Clojure, Datomic) and David Nolen (ClojureScript) - consistently helping us to express previously unthinkable thoughts
- grzm 10y ago
  consistently helping us to express previously unthinkable thoughts Care to share three or four?
  - base698 10y ago
    Not sure if unthinkable is the right word: Simple Made Easy: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy David Nolen talks about how immutable structures work: https://youtu.be/SiFwRtCnxv4?t=504 https://youtu.be/SiFwRtCnxv4?t=504 Objects are Marionettes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdnJDO-xdg&feature=youtu.be&t=1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdnJDO-xdg&feature=youtu.be...
    - grzm 10y ago
      Not sure if unthinkable is the right word That's exactly what I'm asking about. I'm familiar with Hickey and Nolen.
  - dustingetz 10y ago
    Sure, there's a couple in this post: http://tonsky.me/blog/the-web-after-tomorrow/ http://tonsky.me/blog/the-web-after-tomorrow/ Humans think in language and as such the languages we use shape the ideas we can have, and as our ideas evolve we build upon old languages with new languages to express new ideas that old languages lacked the necessary atoms.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Okay. I think we just have different expectations of the word "unthinkable".
OliverLassen 10y ago
https://ayende.com/blog https://ayende.com/blog
- flukus 10y ago
  I used to but I've found that since RavenDB started the problems he has and blogs about are very different to the problems I face everyday.
jfaucett 10y ago
For JavaScript there are a lot of great devs but these two are the guys who I like reading the most, IMHO they write code thats beautiful to look at and well designed. 1. Jeremy Ashkenas - https://github.com/jashkenas https://github.com/jashkenas 2. Nathan Faucett - https://github.com/nathanfaucett https://github.com/nathanfaucett There are others that are really good from a technical skill/functional standpoint, (https://github.com/jdalton https://github.com/jdalton, https://github.com/jeresig https://github.com/jeresig, https://github.com/douglascrockford https://github.com/douglascrockford) but I personally don't find their code as aesthetically pleasing i.e. Resig's love of the terniary statement.
Shank 10y ago
[Zach Holman](https://zachholman.com/ https://zachholman.com/) is a big one for me.
deleted 10y ago
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yla92 10y ago
For Android dev related, I follow Jake Wharton : https://github.com/jakewharton https://github.com/jakewharton , https://twitter.com/JakeWharton https://twitter.com/JakeWharton - He is well known in Android community. He has authored a lot of great libraries personally and under Square. Mark Murphy - https://commonsware.com/blog/ https://commonsware.com/blog/ Chris Banes - https://chris.banes.me/ https://chris.banes.me/ Cyril Mottier - https://cyrilmottier.com https://cyrilmottier.com , https://twitter.com/cyrilmottier https://twitter.com/cyrilmottier Dan Lew - http://blog.danlew.net/ http://blog.danlew.net/ Donn Felker - http://www.donnfelker.com http://www.donnfelker.com Mark Allison - https://blog.stylingandroid.com https://blog.stylingandroid.com Jesse Wilson - https://publicobject.com/ https://publicobject.com/ Roman Nurik - https://twitter.com/romannurik https://twitter.com/romannurik
- donnfelker 10y ago
  Thank you for mentioning me. I really appreciate it. I'm always here to help. Please reach out if there is anything I can do to help you in any way. :)
- bostand 10y ago
  I think you missed one :) Romain Guy - http://www.curious-creature.com/ http://www.curious-creature.com/
VLM 10y ago
Hardware/microcontroller people write code to do interesting things. Sometimes the code isn't as interesting as the whole system or application but you get lured in anyway. The miracle of the adafruit magnetometer driver or MQTT client isn't in the elegance of the code (although its not awful) its that it exists at all and it works. Anyway presented in no order: Ian Lesnet from dangerous prototypes Michael Ossmann and Dominic Spill from great scott gadgets Limor Fried from adafruit There's innumerable folks in the ham radio community who both solder and code like Hans Summers from qrp labs or Wayne Burdick from elecraft. I like the GPS clock discipline system Hans created, its not the pinnacle of esoteric control theory but its very solid engineering in that it works with minimal resources. Good engineering is making the best you can under the limitations, not like IT type work where the more baroque the better seems to reign as a value. Ben Heck counts too. A shout out to frankly the entire esp8266 community the folks behind evilmadscientist (their website is down at this moment) Nathan Seidle from Sparkfun probably count under "masters of shipping lots of working stuff" Admittedly this is turning into a list of cool low level hardware projects that involve coding. But they do develop software and I do follow them.
- mmosta 10y ago
  Love your list, here are a few other hardware people that put out great stuff: - Charles Lohr http://cnlohr.net/ http://cnlohr.net/ mixed bag of art and hardware - Jeroen Domburg (SpriteTM) of http://spritesmods.com http://spritesmods.com now at Espressif, an adept magician.
curiousDog 10y ago
Since no one mentioned them: - Joe Duffy - Raymond Chen - Eric Lippert
daveguy 10y ago
A lot of great programming celebrities here. A little surprised not to see Joey Hess. He's more low key than most: https://joeyh.name https://joeyh.name Also, a second for Limor Fried, ladyada of adafruit.
rocky1138 10y ago
Sebastian Lague: https://twitter.com/SebastianLague https://twitter.com/SebastianLague Tim Sweeney: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic John Carmack: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack Macy Kuang: https://twitter.com/MacyKuang https://twitter.com/MacyKuang Jeri Ellsworth: https://twitter.com/jeriellsworth https://twitter.com/jeriellsworth Ryan Speets: https://twitter.com/RyanSpeets https://twitter.com/RyanSpeets Harvey Ball: https://twitter.com/The_StoneFox https://twitter.com/The_StoneFox
mxuribe 10y ago
Some of my favorites... * Tantek Çelik -> http://tantek.com http://tantek.com and https://indieweb.org https://indieweb.org * Aaron Parecki -> https://aaronparecki.com https://aaronparecki.com and https://indieweb.org https://indieweb.org * Patrick (patio11) McKenzie -> http://www.kalzumeus.com http://www.kalzumeus.com * Moxie Marlinspike -> https://moxie.org https://moxie.org * Scott Hanselman -> http://www.hanselman.com http://www.hanselman.com * Joel Spolsky -> https://www.joelonsoftware.com https://www.joelonsoftware.com * Jeff Atwood -> https://blog.codinghorror.com https://blog.codinghorror.com * Gina Trapani -> http://ginatrapani.org http://ginatrapani.org * Matthew Hodgson -> http://matrix.org http://matrix.org and https://riot.im https://riot.im * Armin Ronacher -> http://lucumr.pocoo.org http://lucumr.pocoo.org * Jeffrey Zeldman -> http://www.zeldman.com http://www.zeldman.com * Eric Meyer -> http://meyerweb.com http://meyerweb.com
The_Hoff 10y ago
Jessie Frazelle : https://blog.jessfraz.com https://blog.jessfraz.com - Funny, culturally aware, and works with a lot of things that are going to be shaping our world. Also, @jessfraz
- caffeinewriter 10y ago
  I follow them as well :) Their work with containers, and their general commentary make for fascinating reading.
caleblloyd 10y ago
Brad Fitzpatrick - https://bradfitz.com/ https://bradfitz.com/ - Started and sold LiveJournal, wrote memcached, works on Golang at Google now. Always enjoy his talks on YouTube. My favorite part is that he doesn't come off as super serious so I find subtle humor in his delivery. In one of his videos where he talks about HTTP/2, he says "HTTP/2 is just supposed to be a better wire format for HTTP, so it's not that interesting". In an earlier video, Brad and Andrew Gerrand screencasted building a full implementation of the protocol in Golang in under 3 hours on YouTube. To the average programmer that would take days to get working and we'd be so excited when it was done we'd be telling everyone who would listen how awesome it is.
- mschaef 10y ago
  He's also spearheaded Camlistore, which is intended to be a archival system for electronic data. Interesting both technically, and for the problem it attempts to solve. https://camlistore.org/ https://camlistore.org/
  - yawaramin 10y ago
    For a second there I got excited because I thought it might be written in OCaml :-)
  - midwestcode 10y ago
    Any anecdotes from anyone who has used this? What did you use it for and did it work how you expected? Only curious -- it seems really interesting for a personal project I plan on working on soon.
- kzisme 10y ago
  For those who enjoy reading there's a chapter/interview with Brad in the book "Coders At Work". I really enjoyed his perspective on the industry.
- jordanthoms 10y ago
  I also have to point to his filmmaking work in the genre of dystopian horror: https://youtu.be/BpsMkLaEiOY https://youtu.be/BpsMkLaEiOY
gravypod 10y ago
I'm surprised no one has yet to mention SirCmpwn. He's a HN regular and does a lot of truely amazing work.
nilved 10y ago
I stalk Steve Klabnik since I'm happy to see anarchism represented in the community.
- jMyles 10y ago
  Haha, I mean yeah. Steve is so much fun. But surely the state is seen with a more critical eye in this community than in society at large, no? At PyCon, anyway, there's always a sense that, when the state finally falls (ideally with a whimper and not a bang) that we'll all be there for each other.
  - nilved 10y ago
    Sort of. There's definitely an anti-authoritian trend amongst hackers, but hackers are only part of the community; the rest are capitalists.
phkahler 10y ago
I'm not one to follow individuals. I prefer to follow projects that impress me. Within those there are often people who I have come to respect and will read what they have to say, but they usually only write on relevant tech stuff - not long form blog posts. Projects I look in on from time to time: SolveSpace risc-v Rust (and Servo) Daala
fapjacks 10y ago
Windytan (Oona Räisänen): http://www.windytan.com/ http://www.windytan.com/ https://twitter.com/windyoona https://twitter.com/windyoona Not quite 100% programming, but she is always doing something super interesting. Mostly with electronics and DSP. She is an awesome hacker and very inspiring to me.
regularfry 10y ago
Avdi Grimm. He's basically the version of me that's better at a) programming, and b) communicating.
base698 10y ago
Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ http://worrydream.com/ Gets posted a lot. Brendan Gregg: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/ http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/ Everything Linux Performance. Rich Hickey/David Nolen Mentioned enough around here.
- itsyogesh 10y ago
  Bret Victor is amazing. I saw his video about the future of programming[0] and have been following him since then. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4
phillc73 10y ago
All R related: Hadley Wickham - https://github.com/hadley https://github.com/hadley Joe Cheng - https://github.com/jcheng5 https://github.com/jcheng5 Yihui Xie - https://github.com/yihui https://github.com/yihui JJ Allaire - https://github.com/jjallaire https://github.com/jjallaire Dean Attali - https://github.com/daattali https://github.com/daattali Bob Rudis - https://github.com/hrbrmstr https://github.com/hrbrmstr Kent Russell - https://github.com/timelyportfolio https://github.com/timelyportfolio Jeroen Ooms - https://github.com/jeroenooms https://github.com/jeroenooms
jackmott 10y ago
Mike Acton, Casey Muratori, Sean Barret, Jonathan Blow, Shawn McGrath. All game programmers, focused on low level C/C++ programming. I'd love to have some similar guys/girls to follow who do something at the other end of the spectrum (F#/Scala/Haskell etc) but haven't come across any that do educational streaming. I get a lot out of seeing people's workflows, as they build actual production code. Most of the functional programming stuff I follow is blogs about toy examples or ideas.
- taway_1212 10y ago
  The same for me plus more of that from Charles Bloom's epic blog (http://www.cbloom.com/rants.html http://www.cbloom.com/rants.html and http://www.cbloom.com/rambles.html http://www.cbloom.com/rambles.html)
picardo 10y ago
Giulio Canti[0] - creator of tcomb library. He writes a lot about type systems and writing typesafe Javascript code. ----------- [0] https://medium.com/@gcanti https://medium.com/@gcanti
sdfjkl 10y ago
I don't really follow anyone, but here's a few whose work I've admired and learnt from (not just their code): D. Richard Hipp (SQLite, Fossil) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp Guido van Rossum (Python) Any of the FreeBSD folk. Same goes for the PostgreSQL lot too - I just like their way of doing things in a calm, collected and efficient manner. Well, at least compared to some other dev teams I've seen :) Donald Knuth of course. The guy who tried to make Objective-C more Smalltalkish. Uh, Marcel Weiher. Had to look that up. Bret Victor. There's more, but that's all I can think of for now.
rahilb 10y ago
Mainly scala devs or java performance people: https://github.com/Atry https://github.com/Atry https://github.com/lihaoyi https://github.com/lihaoyi https://github.com/davegurnell https://github.com/davegurnell https://github.com/nitsanw https://github.com/nitsanw https://github.com/mjpt777 https://github.com/mjpt777 https://github.com/milessabin https://github.com/milessabin https://github.com/xeno-by https://github.com/xeno-by https://github.com/travisbrown https://github.com/travisbrown I follow a lot more but have chosen the n most interesting with a recency bias. In a few cases their blogs are way more active than github. honourable mention for https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mechanical-sympathy https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mechanical-sympathy
OJFord 10y ago
Sean Griffin, going forward (recent discovery). He's a member of both Rails and Rust teams; works on database stuff for both (https://diesel.rs https://diesel.rs). Always working on something interesting to talk about on 'The Bike Shed' podcast, which I 'follow'/would recommend in its own right. Podcast: http://bikeshed.fm http://bikeshed.fm Github: https://github.com/sgrif https://github.com/sgrif
charlescearl 10y ago
Oleg Kiselyov on functional programming http://okmij.org/ftp/ http://okmij.org/ftp/
slowrabbit 10y ago
Armin Ronacher creator of Flask lucumr.pocoo.org
nailer 10y ago
For InfoSec: Troy Hunt https://www.troyhunt.com/ https://www.troyhunt.com/ and Eric Lawrence https://textslashplain.com/ https://textslashplain.com/ For JavaScript (particularly the language changes): Brendan Eich and Dominic Denicola
mindcrime 10y ago
Hmm... I don't really think of things in those terms. There are no individual developers that I explicitly "follow" to any particular degree. I think more about projects, although for single-developer projects I guess it's approximately the same difference.
esseti 10y ago
but, how do you follow them? follow them on github to get notifications? or do they have blogs?
mtrn 10y ago
James Hague, "a recovering programmer who has been designing video games since the 1980s...", http://prog21.dadgum.com http://prog21.dadgum.com
aiyagari 10y ago
I would add to this list the late Pieter Hintjens, known for ZeroMQ and many other projects over the years. http://hintjens.com/ http://hintjens.com/ Beyond programming, his writings about society and how it can be explained algorithmically are very interesting to programmers.
67726e 10y ago
Lukas Eder, creator of jOOQ and a bit of a SQL wizard. Definitely upped my SQL reading things he's either written or retweeted. As a Hibernate refugee, jOOQ is a godsend.
throw2016 10y ago
A really big issue in simplicity and modesty. Engineers are supposed to simplify via their expertise and produce something is consistent, elegant and easy to use and maybe even beautiful. That's the achievement, taking something clearly complex and 'taming' it. There is a ugly trend towards gratuitous complexity. Some seem to revel in it. Is it because of signalling, lack of expertise or hidden fears about becoming redundant and making work? At least one of the folks mentioned here is responsible for producing by far the most user hostile pieces of software I have ever come upon. Discourse seems to not only revel in complexity but celebrate it. The objective does not seem to simplify in any way but make everything as complex and convuluted as possible. The only way to use it is via Docker so you need to know Docker which is itself not a friend of the simplicity line of thought. Then it needs a full dev environment with around 80 packages, 2 databases, around 150 gems most of which need to be compiled and can fail at any time with mysterious messages and while at building possibly the most important software in human history why not just throw in nodejs too. At the end of which I am sure many would have forgotten why they started this exercise in the first place.
johnhenry 10y ago
Dr. Axel Rauschmayer : http://www.2ality.com/ http://www.2ality.com/
Cyph0n 10y ago
My current list: * Armin Ronacher: Flask, Jinja2, click * Jonathan Blow: game dev, designing a new low-level language called Jai (https://www.youtube.com/user/jblow888 https://www.youtube.com/user/jblow888) * Michael Fogleman: extremely proficient Go developer; wrote a Minecraft clone in both Python and C, and a NES emulator in Go (https://github.com/fogleman https://github.com/fogleman)
- davis 10y ago
  Shoutout to Michael. His tenacity and discipline amazes me. He posts some great stuff on his Twitter: https://twitter.com/FogleBird https://twitter.com/FogleBird
sapeien 10y ago
Troll picks: Curtis Yarvin a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin) Xah Lee (http://xahlee.org/ http://xahlee.org/) Michael O'Church (https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/) Bryan Edds (https://medium.com/@bryanedds https://medium.com/@bryanedds) CAT-V (http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/) Suckless (http://suckless.org/philosophy http://suckless.org/philosophy)
- pc86 10y ago
  This will either be my most highly upvoted post ever or will get me hellbanned, but that MOC blog has got to be some of the most aggrandizing, self-obsessed nonsense I have ever read. It's like he's living in his own fantasy world where he is simultaneously the smartest person on Earth and incredibly oppressed. The idea that someone is going through life thinking that way is more than a little depressing.
- zem 10y ago
  oh man, xah lee is still going strong? i remember him trolling usenet in the 90s!
IgorPartola 10y ago
None of them. There are lots that I respect and admire, and there are lots that I think provide a great value to our community. But I don't "follow" them for a few reasons: (1) it takes time, which I don't have, (2) I don't like buying into a cult of personality, no matter how benevolent and (3) I don't derive much value from that and would rather spend that time/energy on creating my own thing. For example when I see a new thing by antirez on HN, I am likely to click it because it's usually good stuff, but I am not going to be following his blog, etc.
- ritchiea 10y ago
  I would argue this is an unduly negative take on following the work of other developers. Following the work of one of your peers in your field does not have to become a cult of personality. It can help you discover what kind of open source work or intellectual direction is actually useful, especially at the beginning of your career. It's totally reasonable to not follow other developers but I also wouldn't want to cultivate the perception that following the work of others is a failure to be busy enough on your own.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  I was going to say pretty much this answer - good ideas stand out on their own, not because [insert person] says it is good. There are many fantastic developers out there that you probably have not heard of their name until they come up with a new idea that blows up or they become known for a prticular talk given or project released - the moment of recognition isn't the point where they suddenly became a developer at that level. I find that it is better for developers to go through the exploration of ideas and to come to their own conclusions/path on the ideas that works for them. Encouraging that academic learning is much better than recommending a specific person for people to dump their time listening to.
- pyre 10y ago
  > (2) I don't like buying into a cult of personality, no matter how benevolent The reason to follow many developers is could be due to their useful output (e.g. informative blog posts). You don't have to agree with everything that someone puts out (cult of personality) to find things that they produce useful. There are developers that I have met in real life, whom I didn't really like their personalty, yet I still take notice whenever they put out a new project because they usually have well-thought out and infinitely usable interfaces.
sakura-rb 10y ago
I'm a Ruby user, these are my inspiration * Yehuda Katz - https://twitter.com/wycats https://twitter.com/wycats * Steve Klabnik - https://twitter.com/steveklabnik https://twitter.com/steveklabnik * Aaron Patterson - https://twitter.com/tenderlove https://twitter.com/tenderlove * Charles Nutter - https://twitter.com/headius https://twitter.com/headius
limedaring 10y ago
Some amazing non-male developers: — Jen Simmons: http://labs.jensimmons.com/ http://labs.jensimmons.com/ — Julia Evans: https://jvns.ca/ https://jvns.ca/ — Lea Verou: http://lea.verou.me/ http://lea.verou.me/ — Mina Markham: http://mina.codes/ http://mina.codes/ — Sara Soueidan: https://sarasoueidan.com/articles/ https://sarasoueidan.com/articles/ — Sarah Mei: http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/ http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/ — Ana Tudor: https://thebabydino.github.io/ https://thebabydino.github.io/ — Anna Debenham: http://www.maban.co.uk/ http://www.maban.co.uk/
- jMyles 10y ago
  Hola limedaring. You rock. Thanks for adding this specifically non-male list. A shame you're being downvoted. See you at PyCon?
  - limedaring 10y ago
    Here's hoping! Travel wise it might be hard — all my sessions were denied this year so it's a lot harder to attend. But still might happen. :)
    - yup21 10y ago
      it's probably 'cause you suck at your job and your genitals don't matter anymore.
- bioxcession 10y ago
  Much appreciated.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  > non-male In what way are the genitals of a programming blog author relevant?
  - exadeci 10y ago
    I had the same reaction. Women in IT talk about how hard it is for them not to be judged by their gender but by their skills and yet many of them promote their gender as if it's more important than the skills.
dijit 10y ago
Bryan Cantrill. http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/ Overzealous love of systems, I don't necessarily always agree with him but I always learn something when listening. Brenden Gregg. http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/ http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/ If I could import someones brain to my own, it would be his. Kyle Fuller https://github.com/kylef https://github.com/kylef Guy is like a UNIX programmer for the modern age.
btashton 10y ago
Brandon Rhodes -- http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/ http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/ Excellent speaker and has recorded some great talks on structuring your code.
rajeemcariazo 10y ago
Anders Hejlsberg - Delphi/C#/TypeScript Jeff Atwood - Coding Horror Joel Spolsky - StackOverflow
fa17 10y ago
Scott Hanselman(dotnet and random h/w hacks) -http://www.hanselman.com/ http://www.hanselman.com/ Rob Connery(dotnet,elixir,postgres) - http://rob.conery.io/ http://rob.conery.io/
guard-of-terra 10y ago
Steve Yegge http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ Wil Shipley https://blog.wilshipley.com/ https://blog.wilshipley.com/ Yossi Kreinin http://yosefk.com/ http://yosefk.com/ All three brilliant, with good sense of humor and having good "vision thing"
amirouche 10y ago
Asher from strong.ai
kittenmittens 10y ago
While i wouldn't say i "follow" them, i have found inspiration from Stephanie Hurlburt: https://twitter.com/sehurlburt https://twitter.com/sehurlburt Scott Hanselman: https://twitter.com/shanselman https://twitter.com/shanselman David Fowler: https://twitter.com/davidfowl https://twitter.com/davidfowl Frank Krueger: https://twitter.com/praeclarum https://twitter.com/praeclarum Troy Hunt: https://twitter.com/troyhunt https://twitter.com/troyhunt Niall Merrigan: https://twitter.com/nmerrigan https://twitter.com/nmerrigan
hackerkid 10y ago
* Feross Aboukhadijeh (https://github.com/feross https://github.com/feross) * James Halliday (https://github.com/substack https://github.com/substack) * Paul Irish (https://github.com/paulirish https://github.com/paulirish) * Addy Osmani (https://github.com/addyosmani https://github.com/addyosmani) * Tim Abbott (https://github.com/timabbott https://github.com/timabbott) * Zach Holman (https://github.com/holman https://github.com/holman) * Jessica McKellar (https://github.com/jesstess https://github.com/jesstess) * TJ Holowaychuk (https://github.com/tj https://github.com/tj) * Jeremy Ashkenas (https://github.com/jashkenas https://github.com/jashkenas) * David Heinemeier Hanson (https://github.com/dhh https://github.com/dhh) * Juan Benet (https://github.com/jbenet https://github.com/jbenet) * Guillermo Rauch (https://github.com/rauchg https://github.com/rauchg)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
  - grzm 10y ago
    Instead of sniping at others' lists, why not contribute your own?
ifdefdebug 10y ago
3 hours and nobody Linus Torvalds? I must be getting old...
- Macha 10y ago
  If you wanted to follow him, how would you do it? He doesn't exactly have a blog, or other channels aimed at a wide audience
  - bostand 10y ago
    Subscribe to LKML, he posts regularly :) Jokes aside, your can follow him on Google+
  - yawaramin 10y ago
    He's torvalds on GitHub....
bcook 10y ago
Craig Heffner: https://github.com/devttys0 https://github.com/devttys0 http://www.devttys0.com http://www.devttys0.com Fabrice Bellard: http://www.bellard.org http://www.bellard.org
leshow 10y ago
Most guys I follow are either rust or haskell developers. @manishearth - rust - https://manishearth.github.io/ https://manishearth.github.io/ @bitemyapp - writer of haskell: first principles @bartoszmilewski - haskell - https://bartoszmilewski.com/ https://bartoszmilewski.com/ @jdegoes - writes informative FP blog posts - http://degoes.net/ http://degoes.net/ @aaron_turon - rust - https://aturon.github.io/blog/ https://aturon.github.io/blog/ @pcwalton - rust @nikomatsakis - rust - http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/ http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/ @paf31 - purescript creator @nick_r_cameron - rust @kmett - famous haskeller @steveklabnik - rust - http://words.steveklabnik.com/ http://words.steveklabnik.com/
codr4life 10y ago
I'm all about ideas; couldn't care less about individuals, including myself. Spending too much time with other people's work kills your creative spark and creates the super star culture we're currently struggling with collectively. We need more fresh perspectives and less idol/icon worship to get out of this mess.
deathanatos 10y ago
Rachel: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ Kyle Kingsbury, for his Jepsen series: https://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen https://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen
jldugger 10y ago
The great thing about following coder bloggers is that they don't actually blog all that often. So you can subscribe a lot without getting overloaded. Dan Luu (danluu.com) Joey Hess (kitenet.net/~joey/) Matthew Garrett (mjg59.dreamwidth.org) Josh Berkus (databasesoup.com) Bunnie Huang (bunniestudios.com) Jessie Frazelle (blog.jessfraz.com) Plus a ton more that haven't updated in years. But if they ressurect and post again, I'll be on top of it!
eddie_31003 10y ago
I hadn't seen links to these guys. Martin Fowler - https://www.martinfowler.com/ https://www.martinfowler.com/ Rober C. Martin (Uncle Bob) - https://sites.google.com/site/unclebobconsultingllc/ https://sites.google.com/site/unclebobconsultingllc/
bpyne 10y ago
From time-to-time I go over to Reginald Braithwaite's site at raganwald.com. He has the right mixture of practical and theoretical topics. I don't "follow" anyone. When new posts show up on HN, and the like, by certain developers, I'm more likely to click on them. My pattern is more commonly to be interested in a topic, do a search, and then read a few articles by whomever wrote on the topic.
pknerd 10y ago
Harrison Kingsley aka sentdex for Python tutorials
m0llusk 10y ago
Chris Roberts! (robertsspaceindustries.com)
felipemnoa 10y ago
Jonathan Blow, developer of The Witness. [1] http://the-witness.net http://the-witness.net
tjholowaychuk 10y ago
Flattered, but honestly many of us are just well-known because we work in the average domain, where many people happen to be. I don't think people should really look up anything I do that way, there are plenty of far more skilled programmers out there, they're just working on more obscure things haha. There's nothing I do that someone else couldn't easily achieve, just takes some time. Besides, most of us also had the perk of working for startups where we got to produce a lot of OSS. Anyone in that position can do the same. The only skill you need is persistence.
danesparza 10y ago
Excellent list of devs already. I would add: Tess Ferrandez: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/tess/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/tess/ (Fantastic analysis of Windows debugging internals) John Gruber: http://daringfireball.net/ http://daringfireball.net/
- teh_klev 10y ago
  ++1 for Tess Ferrandez and her debugging labs. As an engineer for a web hoster I found these invaluable for tracking down why, with no knowledge of their codebase, customer worker processes on IIS would suddenly die, hang or go 100% CPU.
nojvek 10y ago
I follow anyone on github who is doing something that's interesting. It seems this thread mostly lists folks with white sounding names. May be because software development mostly happens in the West. When I was in college, I actually believed white people were superior because they had faster neurons. Took a while to invalidate that theory out.
bbcbasic 10y ago
I don't follow developers, because of time. I tend to search for information I need, rather than follow someone and read what they have to say. If I did the latter I would be continuously distracted and overloaded with too many ideas to explore!
rojobuffalo 10y ago
[Greg Hurrell](https://wincent.com/ https://wincent.com/) for Vim and Relay I wouldn't say closely follow, but I just really like the work he puts out there.
beefman 10y ago
John Carmack https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack Fabrice Bellard http://www.bellard.org/ http://www.bellard.org/ Douglas Crockford https://github.com/douglascrockford https://github.com/douglascrockford Guillermo Rauch https://zeit.co/blog https://zeit.co/blog James Halliday https://github.com/substack https://github.com/substack Terry Cavanagh http://distractionware.com/blog/ http://distractionware.com/blog/ Sam Gentle https://twitter.com/sgentle https://twitter.com/sgentle Caolan McMahon https://github.com/caolan https://github.com/caolan
- beefman 10y ago
  Edit: And Peter Norvig http://norvig.com/ipython/ http://norvig.com/ipython/
malhaar 10y ago
Ned Batchelder. Blog - http://nedbatchelder.com/ http://nedbatchelder.com/ Stack Overflow answers - http://stackoverflow.com/users/14343/ned-batchelder http://stackoverflow.com/users/14343/ned-batchelder Coverage.py - https://github.com/nedbat/coveragepy https://github.com/nedbat/coveragepy Twitter - https://twitter.com/nedbat https://twitter.com/nedbat Ned created coverage.py and is one of the most famous Python devs. He explains Python concepts in a very lucid, easy-to-understand way. Going through his stack overflow answers, his tallks in PyCon are worth doing it.
jhildings 10y ago
Vitalik, one of the devs of Ethereum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin
yawaramin 10y ago
Some interesting mentions here. I tend to follow mostly people who talk about statically-typed functional programming. Some people who I believe stand out because they changed the game in some way: * Dan Grossman for his amazing, succinct explanations of static typing and functional programming concepts in Standard ML * Philip Wadler for his work on Haskell * Miles Sabin for freeing Scala developers from fixed arities with shapeless * Jordan Walke for React (put immutable and reactive programming in every JS dev's hands) and Reason (bringing OCaml to JS devs) * Erik Meijer for putting monads (LINQ) in C# * Evan Czaplicki for bringing functional reactive programming to JavaScript devs.
badosu 10y ago
Jeremy Evans[0]: He has made a lot of useful tools for developers who want to implement a minimallistc approach to web development on Ruby. His probably most well-known projects are Sequel[1] and Roda[2], but he has frequently contributed to many important projects and Ruby[3] itself focusing on simplicity and performance that impacts all the ecosystem. 0: https://github.com/jeremyevans/ https://github.com/jeremyevans/ 1: https://github.com/jeremyevans/sequel https://github.com/jeremyevans/sequel 2: https://github.com/jeremyevans/roda https://github.com/jeremyevans/roda 3: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12024 https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12024 Edit: formatting Edit: Also forgot to mention, I really like his approach on developing frameworks with great extensibility and modularity leveraging Ruby's capabilities without 'magic'.
andrey_utkin 10y ago
Linus Torvalds and Greg KH. I follow them on LKML, I have set up email filters which put their replies into separate folders.
juancampa 10y ago
Lee Byron (@leeb) His work as a maintainer/evangelist of GraphQL is pretty impresive, in particular the way he communicates with contributors (i.e. soft skills) is something to learn from. He's also the author of immutable.js.
merqurio 10y ago
transcranial - Because he is an MD and works on ML like me - Because he is the guy behind kerasJS (Tensorflow on the browser)[1] [1] https://github.com/transcranial/keras-js https://github.com/transcranial/keras-js
novia 10y ago
John Walkenbach. https://plus.google.com/+JohnWalkenbach https://plus.google.com/+JohnWalkenbach I followed him initially hoping to learn some Excel tricks, but he mostly posts recipes and songs and political posts. I've been following him since I was about 13 years old, and I feel like his posts have really shaped my personality growing up. I also started following these two guys after I came across an interesting post they wrote (not together): https://plus.google.com/+EliBenderskyGplus https://plus.google.com/+EliBenderskyGplus https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru However, I've never seen an interesting post from them since, so I should probably stop following them.
- joe563323 10y ago
  Eli has highly technical in depth dry stuff. I followed him even before he joined google and became core python developer.
ZeroClickOk 10y ago
[John Skeet] (https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/ https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/) C#'s transcedence lord
olieidel 10y ago
As no one else has mentioned him yet: Mike Thompson, creator of re-frame (ClojureScript). There are not many ways to follow him (mostly GH [1]), he hardly uses his Twitter [2]. Maybe that's why he's so productive? The constantly evolving re-frame docs [3] are all you need to follow.. [1] https://github.com/mike-thompson-day8 https://github.com/mike-thompson-day8 [2] https://twitter.com/wazound https://twitter.com/wazound [3] https://github.com/Day8/re-frame https://github.com/Day8/re-frame
me_bx 10y ago
Mike bostock, the founder of d3.js * cool blog articles: https://bost.ocks.org/mike/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/ * Beautiful dataviz and tips on twitter: https://twitter.com/mbostock https://twitter.com/mbostock * github: https://github.com/mbostock/ https://github.com/mbostock/
heyts 10y ago
This is fun. Here's mine: - Brad fitzpatrick -- http://bradfitz.com/ http://bradfitz.com/ - Julia Evans -- https://jvns.ca https://jvns.ca - Raymond Hettinger -- https://rhettinger.wordpress.com/ https://rhettinger.wordpress.com/ - Rich Hickey -- https://changelog.com/posts/rich-hickeys-greatest-hits https://changelog.com/posts/rich-hickeys-greatest-hits - Peter Bourgon -- https://peter.bourgon.org/ https://peter.bourgon.org/ - Rebecca Murphey -- https://rmurphey.com/ https://rmurphey.com/ - Daniel Greenfield -- https://www.twoscoopspress.com/ https://www.twoscoopspress.com/
caf 10y ago
I try to read most public mailing list posts (and for some, technical Google+ postings) by Linus Torvalds, Al Viro, Alan Cox, Ted Ts'o, Andy Lutomirski and the pseudonymous "George Spelvin". I also keep a weather eye on the blogs of mjg59 and (not a developer, but an academic computer scientist) John Regehr.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
Peteris Krumins - http://www.catonmat.net http://www.catonmat.net always has interesting bits on his blog.
jmts 10y ago
Chris from Clickspring [1]. Perhaps a little off topic because his content is not specifically software, but given some other mentions of hardware and inspiration his videos are lovely to watch after a long day of code reviews. He recently completed a series building a brass skeleton clock and looks to have some more interesting things going on soon for anyone interested in building things other than software. [1] http://www.clickspringprojects.com/ http://www.clickspringprojects.com/
sbensu 10y ago
I'm surprised no one here has mentioned Jose Valim yet.
somuchpizza 10y ago
I don't know if he can be considered a hard and fast 'developer' anymore, but I follow Rob Walling's work (softwarebyrob.com) pretty closely. His podcast with Mike is a nice open door to the life of a software/business engineer, and he's excellent at communicating complex tech or business problems in language that makes the ideas accessible to simpletons like me.
lwithers 10y ago
* Feross Aboukhadijeh (https://github.com/feross https://github.com/feross) I've been following him since YT Instant. Always seems to be involved in some really exciting projects.
geeio 10y ago
1. [Damian Gryski](https://github.com/dgryski https://github.com/dgryski) - implements a bunch of modern academic papers (mostly in go). Also his twitter has a bunch more stuff. 2. [Daniel Lemire](http://lemire.me/en/ http://lemire.me/en/) - comp sci professor who frequently blogs about interesting db/indexing topics
HeavyStorm 10y ago
- Eric Lippert - John Carmack - Mark Seemann - Scott Hanselman - Scott Gu - Phil Haack ... And some others. Alas, not many open source contributors, because I follow then mostly for their blogs. Most are .NET people, which is my default ecosystem.
alexbanks 10y ago
David Nolan and Rich Hickey. Hilariously enough, I've probably written less than 100 lines of Clojure in my life.
mattbgates 10y ago
I don't know if he is considered a developer, but I think Justin Jackson has some awesome startup advice (for developers). He follows others closely and draws from their experiences as well. There are two things that I commonly see: 1. You have to fail in your first startup to understand. 2. Just because you had that experience doesn't mean the same person will I don't fully agree. The fact is, you can always take heed of advice from ANYONE who has run a startup, gained experience, knows what works and what doesn't; and feel pretty confident that those people know what they are talking about. When it comes to startup.. no need to jump right in and fail like so many others. There are plenty of things you can do in order to NOT fail... and that is.. following the advice of others who have failed, maybe still failing, and found even some hint of successes. His website deserves a visit and a few reads.. just randomly choose some articles with good headlines: https://justinjackson.ca https://justinjackson.ca He'll pull you right in. Sounds like a great guy who is just trying to make his own living to support his family while creating financial freedom away from the mundane workplace, while also helping others.
versesane 10y ago
Newsletters for me - http://importpython.com http://importpython.com and http://importgolang.com http://importgolang.com ...
ivanyv 10y ago
Just one that hasn't been mentioned already: -- Derek Sivers: https://sivers.org/ https://sivers.org/
worknhard99 10y ago
If you're looking for cutting edge complete full stack development, Akshay Nihalaney has an excellent blog series where he shares building a high end production ready application step by step (i.e., Angular 2, SCSS, Material Design, automated testing, security, etc., etc.) https://blog.realworldfullstack.io/@akshay.nihalaney https://blog.realworldfullstack.io/@akshay.nihalaney
abrak 10y ago
Bret Victor
SnowingXIV 10y ago
Second for TJ and Dan. I also like following James Kyle - https://github.com/thejameskyle https://github.com/thejameskyle because he seems to keep people humble and realize we're pushing code not doing heart surgery. We're not some special snowflake that is above others.

LyndsySimon 10y ago

My introduction to the world of professional software development was meeting one of the idols and hanging out with him for two days before realizing who he was. We've kept in touch since then and I now consider him one of my best friends. I agree about putting people on pedestals, and my own experiences speak to that. The person I once saw in a very idealized way I now see as fully a person, complete with faults and failures. I would argue that there are no "masters" - or rather, that there are very few of them, and those that I might consider such are "just people" too.

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
> I would argue that there are no "masters" - or rather, that there are very few of them, and those that I might consider such are "just people" too. Mastery does not obviate humanity. The most gifted (which I define as the cross-section between talented and practiced) people I know tend to care more about the content of your character than your technical prowess.
- contravariant 10y ago
  >The most gifted (which I define as the cross-section between talented and practiced) people I know tend to care more about the content of your character than your technical prowess. Odd choice of words, wouldn't it make more sense to switch the meaning of 'talented' and 'gifted'? A 'gift' is something you receive without sacrifice, while a 'talent' needs to be honed.
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    Talent is innate. Skill is practiced. If you're passionate enough about something that you happen to have a natural affinity for in order to hone your skills, I call that a gift.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      Not a native speaker but I also find that odd: I always thought talented referred to the parable about the servants who were given talents, and as such I would expect that talented and gifted would be almost the same.
      - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
        Disclaimer: I shouldn't be regarded as any sort of authority on the English language. I sort of decide what words mean to me, publish them, and then stick to those definitions (while pointing anyone confused towards the published definitions). There's probably a better way to classify these ideas without tripping over other peoples' lexicographic pedantry, but this is the Internet and you're always going to find a contrary opinion no matter what you do. The winning move is to not play. Thus: talent: natural affinity skill: aptitude gained through effort gifted: a person who is both talented and skilled in an area
      - dcookie 10y ago
        I assume you are referring to Jesus' "parable of the talents". If so, it is dealing with money, not skills. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(weight) https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(weight)
    - contravariant 10y ago
      I just found it weird that you chose the word 'gift' as something less innate than a 'talent'. It's also interesting that 'talent' used to have the meaning 'A desire or inclination for something', which is similar to your use of the word gift. Anyway, I won't say the way you're using those words is wrong, language is after all pretty flexible, it just didn't seem like the most obvious choice.
    - adamsea 10y ago
      This. +1+1