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Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

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Re: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

#151

Post by Bahamut »

IgorPartola wrote: post #125

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 se…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

#153

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

#154

Post by pyre »

IgorPartola wrote: post #125

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 se…

> (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.

Re: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

#155

Post by kamyarg »

mrsmn wrote: post #49

David Beazley : http://www.dabeaz.com/ Kenneth Reitz : https://www.kennethreitz.org/ Armin Ronacher : http://lucumr.pocoo.org/ Julien Danjou : https://julien.danjou.info/ Hynek Schlawack : https://hynek.me/ Donald Stufft : https://caremad.io/

I would like to also add Brett Cannon: https://snarky.ca His blog is very informative.

Re: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

#156

Post by btown »

LukeB_UK wrote: post #8

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.

Sometimes pedestals are justified, though. For instance, Dan Abramov (mentioned by OP) is not only one of the most respected voices in React patterns and best practices, he also works at Facebook and has an outsized voice in advocating for development priorities internally; in fact, he is the secretary at the core group meetings [0]. What he retweets [1] is the closest indication we can get to what the core group will have in mind when choosing what design patterns to best support going forward, in both performance and syntax. And so "What Would Dan Abramov Do?" is a tongue-in-cheek meme at the office, but it's also a helpful indicator to help future-proof our choices of React patterns.

[0] https://github.com/reactjs/core-notes - see, for instance, https://github.com/reactjs/core-notes/blob/master/2016-12/de...

[1] https://twitter.com/dan_abramov

Re: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

#157

Post by bad_user »

IgorPartola wrote: post #125

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 se…

Following the blogs of people whose work you like doesn't take much effort. All it takes is a good RSS reader.

Because most of them don't have time to write frequently. The people I follow tend to write once in a blue moon, but when it happens, the articles are really good and I consider it a shame to get lost in a sea of noise.

If I open my RSS reader right now, I'm sure to find 10 good articles that I like, which is not what I can say about HN on any given day.

In fact on HN I'm glad to see an item worth my click once per month. The content promoted here is really bad IMO and I only come for the discussions, which tend to be interesting as people bother to post long comments.

Re: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

#159

Post by itsyogesh »

base698 wrote: post #87

Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ Gets posted a lot. Brendan Gregg: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/ Everything Linux Performance. Rich Hickey/David Nolen Mentioned enough around here.

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

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