Ask HN: Which developers/programmers do you closely follow? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which developers/programmers do you closely follow?

18 pointslewisjoe18 comments

More than any books, my motivation and drive to excel comes from the activities of people I consider as masters.

In case of programming, which developers do you closely follow to boost yourself? Include blog/github/website links.

https://twitter.com/spolsky http://www.joelonsoftware.com/

Joel doesn't write as frequently these days but the content he does put out always stands the test of time. I've modelled a lot of my business processes and systems on his approach at FogCreek Software.

We also use his software, we were avid users of FogBugz back in the day at my software company, and we now use Trello to manage most things.

Udi Dahan https://twitter.com/UdiDahan very knowledgeable about distributed architecture

David Fowler https://twitter.com/davidfowl important guy behind ASP.NET, SignalR, etc.

Troy Hunt https://twitter.com/troyhunt security expert and very knowledgeable about Azure

Edit: I see some people just writing some names, but I think that is completely useless without any context on WHY you follow them.

defunkt (https://github.com/defunkt), feross (https://github.com/feross), holman (https://github.com/holman), samaaron (https://github.com/samaaron), & indirect (https://github.com/indirect) among others all doing cool stuff (and are cool people).

In no particular order

Dan Piponi http://blog.sigfpe.com/

The ever awesome oleg http://okmij.org/ftp/

Chris Done http://chrisdone.com/

Gabriel Gonzalez http://www.haskellforall.com/

There are many more. The haskell community has awesome developers in abundance.

None. People who have time to cultivate a following are very rarely the people who deserve one.

Thats not true in progamming community

I agree with the "None", but for a slightly different reason. When someone follows a person it is intended to be because the ideas that that person presents are worth knowing about. But, even the best do not produce an unbroken stream of perfect articles and ideas; so I don't follow anyone, instead I keep some websites in mind as resources to consult.

In the long run it is the content that matters, not the content creator.

If I did follow anyone it would be a set of obscure computer scientists like Tony Hoare (mostly retired), Christopher Strachey (deceased), Leslie Lamport (still working for Microsoft), Joe Armstrong (very much still working on Erlang); but even so it is the content of the papers they write and the code that they have given us that matters.

In the case of "the things you don't know you don't know", I find following certain developers to be priceless. Can't go looking for a reference for something you don't know exists, after all.

Some people are better than others at identifying useful ideas and communicating why they are useful. Those people often grow a following organically.

I tend to follow the folks whose NPM contributions I use regularly, or who are just badasses in general... So, in no particular order:

    * TJ Holowaychuk
    * Sindre Sorhus
    * Addy Osmani
    * Izs
    * Passy
    * Contra
    * Fat
    * Substack
    * Peteris Krumins
    * Mark Otto
    * Mark Dalgeish
    * Dan Shaw

...I'm sure I'm forgetting hella people...

In JS, @paulirish, @addyosmani, @rmurphey, @pornelski, @pgte, @izs, @leaverou, @brendeneich, @jakearchibald.

On Android, Jake Wharton and Koushik Dutta, always looking for more. Chris Banes and Roman Nurik are great from the design side.

know anyone on iOS?

@rwenderlich @mattt

Tom Lane on the postgresql lists. His breadth and depth of knowledge on the postgres code is mind boggling. And he takes equal effort in helping out on all lists...ranging from novice to hackers.

Do you have some examples of people you follow and rationales as to why?

Zac Holman — @holman on twitter (I think). Pretty awesome guy.

windytan.com theorangeduck.com nullprogram.com esr.ibiblio.org (wtf?) joeyh.name ebb.org/bkuhn shift-reset.com joearms.github.io

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