Ask HN: Who is the best developer you know on Hacker News?

I don't know, but my first thought was, best at what?

- dealing with gnarly legacy code that is running in high-importance production environment (must be cautious and conservative) vs. green-field development (pays to try new technologies out)

- solo vs. in-a-team development (different emphasis on speed vs. clarity)

The perfect developer would, of course, be the best at all of these, but in practice the personality to be good at one is usually the opposite of the personality to be good at another.

I don't know any of the devs on HN (that I'm aware of anyway), so I have no data to base such an assessment on.

Myself.

Nobody ever got anywhere by being overly modest!

This seems funny. But after a career in tech, I find it to be 100% right. You can't be over bearing but you need to let people know what you've done and what you can do to get ahead. Wall Flowers get no where. They get laid off.