
Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow? - krptos
The one thing that keeps me inspired, more than anything, is following up with the activities of people whom I consider as masters.<p>When it comes to programming, which developers do you closely follow?<p>Please include blog&#x2F;website&#x2F;github links.<p>A couple of my favourites:<p>[TJ Holowaychuk](https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tj) - because he&#x27;s a wizard. The number of premium open source projects he&#x27;s been a part of, is just astounding.<p>[Dan Abramov](https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gaearon) - First hit on his redux talk, then drifted to his blog posts. I like his clarity of expressing the why&#x27;s and how&#x27;s.
======
IgorPartola
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.

~~~
pyre
> (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.

~~~
IgorPartola
I suppose I prefer to consume my personal developer blog posts filtered
through something like HN. It ends up being fairly high quality without
worrying if I'm following enough people or the correct people.

~~~
sportnak
I understand what you're saying, some people follow a popular developer and
that can cause them to take what they say and regurgitate it with an annoying
arrogance.

But supposing everybody took your stance we wouldn't be able to have something
like Hacker News. I think following popular developers and sharing what you
believe to be good content may not be enjoyable all the time, but I do think
it's necessary. Just as someone who has only been in the software culture for
about two years now.

~~~
IgorPartola
You are right. Someone has to do it. I suppose I just don't want to be me :-p

~~~
artacus
They call me the wanderer.

------
limedaring
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/)

~~~
brokenmachine
_> non-male_

In what way are the genitals of a programming blog author relevant?

~~~
exadeci
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.

~~~
wingerlang
While the person writing the post pointed it out, only one of the blogs seemed
to be about her gender* while the others didn't even mention it as far as I
saw.

* [http://mina.codes/#](http://mina.codes/#) (extremely so, if I may add)

~~~
exadeci
Of course, I was talking about the fact that, this comment is the second on
this thread and that many women act this way.

The best programming girls are usually the ones that don't waste their time
with this representation of their gender.

~~~
KingMob
Wow.

I'll bet some of them talk about gender/feminism/discrimination/etc because of
men still calling them "girls".

------
ploggingdev
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
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?

~~~
ploggingdev
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-
stockfight...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/10/30/developing-in-stockfighter-
with-no-trading-experience/)

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/08/20/designing-and-
building-s...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/08/20/designing-and-building-
stockfighter-our-programming-game/)

------
caleblloyd
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
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
For a second there I got excited because I thought it might be written in
OCaml :-)

------
LukeB_UK
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.

~~~
LyndsySimon
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
> 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
>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
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
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.

~~~
dcookie
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_\(weight\))

------
yla92
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
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. :)

------
jcalabro
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
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
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
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.

------
VLM
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
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.

------
Davertron
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...

~~~
Shicholas
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
What makes you say that?

~~~
Shicholas
just the way he talks and simplifies FP in a way that previously has been
impossible to achieve.

------
hackerkid
* 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))

------
mrsmn
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
found the Python guy

~~~
mrsmn
How'd you guess?

------
Cyph0n
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
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)

------
kittenmittens
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)

------
base698
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
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)

------
theparanoid
Fabrice Bellard, [http://www.bellard.org](http://www.bellard.org)

~~~
mschaef
Seconded. This developer has an absolutely amazing output and corpus of works.

~~~
joe563323
very true. I just wish he gives some video interviews. Just would love to
watch such an amazing productive guy.

------
queicherius
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
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)

------
rahilb
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)

------
malhaar
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.

------
tjholowaychuk
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.

------
phillc73
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)

------
keymone
[https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-
fanclub](https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub)

~~~
phyrex
Whenever Rich Hickey says something, I listen!

------
aiyagari
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.

------
The_Hoff
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
I follow them as well :) Their work with containers, and their general
commentary make for fascinating reading.

------
beefman
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
Edit: And Peter Norvig
[http://norvig.com/ipython/](http://norvig.com/ipython/)

------
leshow
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/)

------
yawaramin
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.

------
martijn_himself
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
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).

------
rocky1138
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)

------
vanderZwan
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/)

------
sakura-rb
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)

------
sapeien
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
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.

------
hunterjrj
John Carmack

[https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack)

------
dijit
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.

------
rajathagasthya
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)

------
gtrubetskoy
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.

------
sinamdar
Peter Norvig. [http://norvig.com](http://norvig.com)

------
fapjacks
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.

------
Amorymeltzer
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
You actually mean Gary Bernhardt of Destroy All Software
[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts)

------
fa17
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/)

------
nicolasMLV
David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of Basecamp and Creator of Ruby on Rails
[https://www.twitter.com/dhh](https://www.twitter.com/dhh)

------
AdamGibbins
Dan Luu: [http://danluu.com/](http://danluu.com/)

------
osullivj
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)

------
OJFord
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)

------
deathanatos
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)

------
g3rv4
[Nick Craver]([http://nickcraver.com/](http://nickcraver.com/)) and on twitter
[@Nick_Craver]([https://twitter.com/Nick_Craver](https://twitter.com/Nick_Craver))

------
gjkood
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-
Program...](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))

Founders At Work ([https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-
Early/...](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))

Architecture of Open Source Systems ([https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-
Open-Source-Applications...](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))

Architecture of Open Source Systems - Vol 2
([https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Open-Source-
Applications...](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))

------
ggregoire
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)

------
charlescearl
Oleg Kiselyov on functional programming
[http://okmij.org/ftp/](http://okmij.org/ftp/)

------
coderjames
Casey Muratori:
[https://mollyrocket.com/casey/](https://mollyrocket.com/casey/)

------
eddie_31003
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/)

------
danesparza
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
++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.

------
johnhenry
Dr. Axel Rauschmayer : [http://www.2ality.com/](http://www.2ality.com/)

------
heyts
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/)

------
diyseguy
Uncle Bob. [https://cleancoders.com/](https://cleancoders.com/)

------
novia
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
Eli has highly technical in depth dry stuff. I followed him even before he
joined google and became core python developer.

------
tbrock
C: Salvatore Sanfillipo (antirez)

Python: Kenneth Reitz

JS: TJ Hollowaychuck

C++: John Carmack

Ruby: Aaron Patterson, _why

~~~
VeejayRampay
What's common about all those programmers is that they're consistently nice
people.

------
dustingetz
Rich Hickey (Clojure, Datomic) and David Nolen (ClojureScript) - consistently
helping us to express previously unthinkable thoughts

~~~
grzm
_consistently helping us to express previously unthinkable thoughts_

Care to share three or four?

~~~
dustingetz
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.

~~~
mej10
I write Clojure every day and enjoy it. I think Hickey/Nolen have clarified
many ways of thinking about programming problems for me. I've learned a lot
from them.

But this level of marketing spiel can be off-putting -- especially when you
provide examples that non-web architectures have been using for many years.

Imagine I'm an experienced developer, and you've promised that I will be able
to express previously unthinkable thoughts if I just learn what these guys are
talking about. And then I look at it and it is exactly the same thing my
colleagues and I have been doing for years in Java. What am I supposed to make
of it?

------
merb
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.

------
lj3
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.

------
picardo
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)

------
zamalek
[Jeff Preshing]([https://twitter.com/preshing](https://twitter.com/preshing)).
He is a master of threading primitives. His CppCon talks are enlightening.

------
mattbgates
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.

------
lemiffe
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)

------
me_bx
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/)

------
badosu
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'.

------
mxuribe
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)

------
0xFFC
Steve [https://twitter.com/steveklabnik](https://twitter.com/steveklabnik)

He is awesome human being.

~~~
mingyeow
Yes, Steve is the best person on the internet indeed! Always outspoken, always
protective, never nasty

~~~
ad_hominem
> _always protective, never nasty_

Nobody's perfect

[https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/](https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/)

~~~
steveklabnik
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.

------
alexee
Petr [http://petr-mitrichev.blogspot.com/](http://petr-
mitrichev.blogspot.com/)

~~~
codenut
are you a competitive programmer?

------
jfaucett
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.

------
slowrabbit
Armin Ronacher creator of Flask lucumr.pocoo.org

------
codr4life
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.

------
andrey_utkin
Linus Torvalds and Greg KH. I follow them on LKML, I have set up email filters
which put their replies into separate folders.

------
nailer
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

------
aelmeleegy
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.

------
bcook
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)

------
regularfry
Avdi Grimm. He's basically the version of me that's better at a) programming,
and b) communicating.

------
ifdefdebug
3 hours and nobody Linus Torvalds? I must be getting old...

~~~
Macha
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
Subscribe to LKML, he posts regularly :)

Jokes aside, your can follow him on Google+

------
shellab
[Dave Winer]([http://scripting.com](http://scripting.com))

------
mightybyte
Lennart Augustsson

[http://ioccc.org/winners.html#Lennart_Augustsson](http://ioccc.org/winners.html#Lennart_Augustsson)

[https://github.com/augustss](https://github.com/augustss)

------
sdfjkl
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.

------
olieidel
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)

------
mtrn
James Hague, "a recovering programmer who has been designing video games since
the 1980s...", [http://prog21.dadgum.com](http://prog21.dadgum.com)

------
iansowinski
Gary Bernhardt -
[https://twitter.com/garybernhardt](https://twitter.com/garybernhardt) He's
making great screencasts in his copmpany!

------
jmts
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/)

------
worknhard99
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)

------
chhib
MPJ and his funfunfunction channel
[https://www.youtube.com/mpjmevideos](https://www.youtube.com/mpjmevideos)

~~~
martijn_himself
Very talented guy- his 'musings' on development-related matters are worth a
watch too.

------
jldugger
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!

------
geeio
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

------
justaman
Ted Unangst BSD dev.
[http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/](http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/)

------
somuchpizza
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.

------
Shank
[Zach Holman]([https://zachholman.com/](https://zachholman.com/)) is a big one
for me.

------
SnowingXIV
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.

------
smallhands
wait ..... john carmack, reason why i end up programming for a living

~~~
rroriz
Same here. And he looks like a friend of mine.

------
throw2016
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.

------
nojvek
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.

------
curiousDog
Since no one mentioned them:

\- Joe Duffy

\- Raymond Chen

\- Eric Lippert

------
caf
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.

------
OliverLassen
[https://ayende.com/blog](https://ayende.com/blog)

~~~
flukus
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.

------
mindcrime
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.

------
phkahler
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

------
daveguy
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.

------
juancampa
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.

------
HeavyStorm
\- 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.

------
btashton
Brandon Rhodes --
[http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/](http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/) Excellent
speaker and has recorded some great talks on structuring your code.

------
lwithers
* 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.

------
versesane
Newsletters for me - [http://importpython.com](http://importpython.com) and
[http://importgolang.com](http://importgolang.com) ...

------
rojobuffalo
[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.

------
jhildings
Vitalik, one of the devs of Ethereum

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin)

------
ZeroClickOk
[John Skeet] ([https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/](https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/))
C#'s transcedence lord

------
flurdy
Java Posse [http://javaposse.com](http://javaposse.com) until the end. Even
long after I had moved on from Java.

------
godzillabrennus
Peteris Krumins - [http://www.catonmat.net](http://www.catonmat.net) always
has interesting bits on his blog.

------
ivanyv
Just one that hasn't been mentioned already:

\-- Derek Sivers: [https://sivers.org/](https://sivers.org/)

------
nazgob
Gary Bernhardt,
[https://twitter.com/garybernhardt](https://twitter.com/garybernhardt)

------
yunolisten
nowadays, none, thanks to restraining orders.

------
felipemnoa
Jonathan Blow, developer of The Witness.

[1] [http://the-witness.net](http://the-witness.net)

------
alexbanks
David Nolan and Rich Hickey. Hilariously enough, I've probably written less
than 100 lines of Clojure in my life.

------
gravypod
I'm surprised no one has yet to mention SirCmpwn. He's a HN regular and does a
lot of truely amazing work.

------
Shicholas
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.

------
bpyne
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.

------
merqurio
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)

------
rajeemcariazo
Anders Hejlsberg - Delphi/C#/TypeScript

Jeff Atwood - Coding Horror

Joel Spolsky - StackOverflow

------
marvel_boy
For iOS development Mattt Thompson @mattt

For iOS animations Victor Baro @victorbaro

------
sbensu
I'm surprised no one here has mentioned Jose Valim yet.

------
pknerd
Harrison Kingsley aka sentdex for Python tutorials

------
jopacicdev
coderabbi, [https://twitter.com/coderabbi](https://twitter.com/coderabbi)

------
m0llusk
Chris Roberts! (robertsspaceindustries.com)

------
esseti
but, how do you follow them? follow them on github to get notifications? or do
they have blogs?

------
amirouche
Asher from strong.ai

------
abrak
Bret Victor

------
jackmott
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
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))

------
guard-of-terra
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"

------
unwind
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
Still, the beauty of markdown is that even if it does not get parsed, it is
still legible.

------
nilved
I stalk Steve Klabnik since I'm happy to see anarchism represented in the
community.

~~~
jMyles
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
Sort of. There's definitely an anti-authoritian trend amongst hackers, but
hackers are only part of the community; the rest are capitalists.

------
67726e
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.

------
bbcbasic
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!

