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33 Developers you MUST Subscribe to as a JavaScript Junkie

33 Developers you MUST Subscribe to as a JavaScript Junkie

As JavaScript developers, we have quite crazy requirements. The playing field is in a state of constant flux and one of the best ways to keep up is interacting with other developers and reading their code. Blogs, such as the one you’re reading, are a perfect amalgamation of these two activities.

Today, I’d like to bring your attention to a number of blogs written by pretty well versed developers, focusing on JavaScript development, that you owe yourselves to bookmark.


A Quick Word on my Choices

Even though these blogs aren’t updated often, in fact a lot of them get updated maybe thrice a year, the content they do have are worth their weight in, well, smartly written JavaScript. The developers below vary from wildly popular to almost obscure but they have one thing in common — their passion for JavaScript.

I’ve limited myself to a cliff notes version of each dev to keep it short. Don’t loiter around — click on those links and get reading!


John Resig

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Douglas Crockford

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Dean Edwards

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Nicholas C. Zakas

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Dustin Diaz

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Brendan Eich

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • Inventor of the JavaScript language.
  • Works at Mozilla.
  • Remember to check out his podcast, as well.
  • Tweets at @BrendanEich

David Flanagan

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Thomas Fuchs

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Paul Irish

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Yehuda Katz

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Juriy Zaytsev

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Peter van der Zee

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • Creator of the JS1K competition
  • Tweets at @kuvos

Stoyan Stefanov

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Dmitry Baranovskiy

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Lucas Smith

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • YUI team member
  • Tweets at @ls_n

Ben Alman

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • Contributor to the jQuery and Modernizr projects.
  • Creator of so many jQuery plugins that we’re ethically obligated to use the word buttload.
  • Tweets at @cowboy

Rey Bango

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • jQuery team member.
  • Works at Microsoft.
  • Tweets at @reybango

Remy Sharp

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Cody Lindley

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James Padolsey

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Oliver Steele

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Ben Cherry

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • Works at Twitter.
  • Github repos here.
  • Tweets at @bcherry

Michael Bolin

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James Coglan

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Angus Croll

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • Works at Twitter.
  • Tweets at @angusTweets

John-David Dalton

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Andrea Giammarchi

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Peter Michaux

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • Dude is a darn enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in mystery. The articles are pretty much one of the best you’ll get to read so don’t miss out.

Christian Heilmann

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Dion Almaer

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Rebecca Murphey

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David Walsh

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Addy Osmani

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  • Find his musings on JavaScript at his blog.
  • Member of the jQuery team [bug triage and API docs].
  • Tweets at @addyosmani

That’s a Wrap!

I’m sure a lot of you are frothing at the mouth by this list not including someone. Fret not! Chime in below and I’ll make sure to keep this list periodically updated.

Siddharth is Siddharth on Codecanyon
Note: Want to add some source code? Type <pre><code> before it and </code></pre> after it. Find out more
  • http://www.marcgayle.com Marc Gayle

    I would add Addy Osmani to this list – http://twitter.com/addyosmani

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way

      Yeah — maybe after all the comments, Sid can update this list to 40-50.

    • http://www.ssiddharth.com Siddharth
      Author

      Oh, absolutely. I’ll update the post once I accumulate devs in sets of 5.

    • http://vijayjoshi.org/ Vijay Joshi

      This. I actually skimmed this list for Addy’s name first.

      • # Fez

        @Vijay Joshi

        Hah! Same here – When I reached the end of it I thought maybe I was the only one that considered him “must follow” worthy. Guess I was wrong :)

  • http://tommasoraspo.com Raspo

    LOL
    You are using a post-image I made some times ago for my blog.
    http://www.bittrack.it/archives/comprimere-e-decomprimere-un-file-javascript/

    It’s a small world ;)

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way

      Raspo – Did you grant the author permission to use that image? If not, let me know, and we’ll switch it out immediately. :)

      • http://tommasoraspo.com Raspo

        Do whatever you want with that.
        I feel honored that you are using it :)

  • Miles Johnson

    I am quite amazed that no one from MooTools has been listed here. Especially since MooTools is geared towards an OOP/prototype approach while jQuery is merely a DOM extender.

    • kazuto

      Sounds like you’re on one side of the fence of an already well established argument.

    • http://www.ssiddharth.com Siddharth
      Author

      Well, I mainly dabble with jQuery [Prototype previously] so I’m more familiar with those devs.

      This is where readers like you come in, naturally. Shoot me some names and I’ll update this list.

      Thanks for reading. :)

      • Abhijit

        David Walsh is one (http://davidwalsh.name/). I like his posts and he also deals with jQuery.

      • http://merrickchristensen.com Merrick Christensen

        @rauchg – MooTools Core, Socket.io, Express.js, Mongoose
        @cpojer – MooTools Core, all around brilliant.
        @rpflo – Crazy amount of open source, often revolving around MooTools.

        There is a plethora of other note-worth JS developers, it appears server side JS isn’t listed here though, which is maybe why developers outside of the DOM weren’t listed. ;) JK.

        Good post.

        Merrick

    • James Scott

      I do agree with @Miles – there should be atleast two Mootools developers on here. The list is full of the JQuery dev team and twitter engineers!

  • Burak Erdem

    I think Rebecca Murphey would be mentioned too, http://twitter.com/rmurphey

  • kankuro

    wow…. these will serve as my inspiration…. i already bookmarked this article to keep it visit often…

  • kankuro

    @Miles Johnson: ya you’re ryt… why is it no-one from MooTools are there in the list…

  • Edwardson Sarenas

    where’s david walsh of http://davidwalsh.name/ ??

    suuuuperr racist.. no one from mootools?

    • http://www.ssiddharth.com Siddharth
      Author

      Haha. Don’t mistake my apparent lack of exposure to devs from other libraries for malice. I’ll make sure to update this article soon enough. :)

      • James Scott

        I would add David Walsh and Ryan Florence from the mootools dev team.

    • Brien Malone

      I second the vote for David Walsh. Every time I google mootools AND JQuery together his blog pops up.

      • Giordhano Valdez

        one more for David walsh !!, he’s a great javascript developer …

  • Luis Confraria

    Brendan Eich tweets at @BrendanEich .
    Should also refer his podcast at http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/

    • http://www.ssiddharth.com Siddharth
      Author

      Thanks, updated.

  • chichibek

    hey what about jeffry way… he helpus alot

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way

      Not yet in the same class as these JS masters. :) Maybe in five years.

      • http://www.delucamarketing.ch NetHawk

        I disagree – Importance = Knowledge + Ability to share. You are among the top developers one should follow…

  • http://www.pixeldonor.com jem

    Yeah gonna agree this list is a little lopsided. jQuery is great, but I think its geared towards more of a novice audience and arguably isn’t as suitable for larger application development as frameworks like mootools, yui, prototype, and dojo because of the lack of OO-ness.

  • http://www.wdonline.com/ Jeremy McPeak

    Hey’s not as publicly engaged as he used to be, but Erik Arvidson’s a good candidate for the list–one of the pioneers in client-side development.

    http://erik.eae.net
    http://webfx.eae.net
    Twitter: @erikarvidsson

  • http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com Angus Croll

    Don’t forget @dmitrysoshnikov and @abozhilov

  • http://james.padolsey.com James

    Ahh, I hate that picture. Please use this or this instead.

    I am grateful for being on this list, although now feel a little bad because I haven’t blogged anything JS-relevant in a while.. and my Twitter feed is depressing from a JS standpoint.

    Oh, and jQuery lint is dead. I hate to say so, but I don’t have the time for it. Gosh, sorry to be the bearer or complaints and bad news.

    Keep up the good work! :)

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way

      K – image updated!

    • http://paulirish.com Paul Irish

      hahaha james this picture is so fantastic. :D

  • user

    Eric Pascarello, Author of Ajax in Action @epascarello

  • A’braham Barakhyahu

    IT wouldbe great if a twitter list was created for this.

  • Ilya

    Seems you’ve missed Dmitry Soshnikov: http://dmitrysoshnikov.com/
    Some of listed above could learn much from his articles.

  • Bob Hazard

    I get most of these tweets in ChromeDeck by following Scoble’s Programmers list in one of the columns. He has curated a lot of other lists too.

    http://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/programmers

  • http://www.xpertdeveloper.com Avinash

    I would suggest to add Aaron Newton from Mootorial. For MooTools

  • Sandy

    Mr.Noob?

  • http://bluesmoon.info/ Philip Tellis
    • http://www.semicolon.co.za Talifhani Luvhengo

      Haha, that’s a little funny. But happens to the best of us I guess.

  • Dennis

    Great list, thanks a lot Siddharth! Lots of them were already in my list, just added some more and I am very happy with this :)

    By the way, it would be great to see a such a list for PHP and WordPress.

    • http://www.iamiivo.com Iivo

      Second that! :)

  • Amedo

    Great list!
    Another resource that I found very useful in spanish is:

    http://www.etnassoft.com

    He has a lot of Javascript articles and a few translates of the autors of the above list.
    His Twitter is interesting too: @etnassoft.

    Great work Siddharth.

  • Dean

    Not a real person, but jsperf.com has a subscription feed as well and you can follow it to keep track of new performance test cases added to the site. Verry interesting! There is also feeds for specific author. (jsperf made by @mathias and using a benchmark script made by John David Dalton who is mentioned in this article!!)

  • http://wppremium.info neel

    Yes i will also like to see developers from other programming langauages like PHP and mostly from wordpress…

  • http://www.netsi.dk/wordpress Sten Hougaard

    Hi,
    Nice list! You might also setup a search for “#javascript” – that will give you a lot of relevant javascript content (like this post) ;-)

    /Sten

  • http://markoj.tumblr.com Marko Jozic

    Aren’t there any women? Oo

    • Tagny Daggart

      I think Rebecca Murphy is worth mentioning in this list, eh?

      http://blog.rebeccamurphey.com/

    • http://www.clodpated.com Marcus Hodges

      I thought the same. 30 people and we couldn’t come up with even one woman? I’ll second the previous suggestion for Rebecca Murphy as a start.

    • http://www.rebeccamurphey.com Rebecca Murphey

      Nah, no women write JavaScript.

      • http://dojotoolkit.org Tom Trenka

        *snarf*

      • http://davidwalsh.name/ David Walsh

        Agreed. :)

      • http://www.ssiddharth.com Siddharth
        Author

        Woman, go get me some sammiches.

        Please don’t kill me now.

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way

      Rebecca will be added in the next day or so.

  • http://benentwisle.com Ben

    just fyi: Nicholas C. Zakas two links dont go anywhere

  • http://www.bluebit.co.uk markj

    @rmurphey definitely belongs on this list, otherwise, good stuff.

  • http://harry.me Harry Brundage

    Jeremy Ashkenas anyone? Coffeescript, backbone.js? @jashkenas?

    Or Ryan Dahl? Node.js? @ryah?

  • http://twitter.com/dmsr/ dmsr

    I created 2 lists from this list:
    Google Reader Bundle (One Click Subscribe): http://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user%2F07874758680650443141%2Fbundle%2FJavaScript%20Junkie
    Twitter List: http://twitter.com/dmsr/javascript-junkie

  • dxb

    This guy is good too

    http://addyosmani.com

  • http://www.kellypacker.com Kelly Packer

    Not one woman in the bunch. How about the super sharp Rebecca Murphey?

  • John Lesh

    Really, no women Javascriptor???

  • http://github.com/mynameiszanders Alexander Baldwin

    I agree with a lot of people here, David Walsh should have been included – not that any of the above deserve to be replaced!

    As a MooTools core developer that should be reason enough, but the fact that he tries to create examples in jQuery and Dojo in his blog posts alongside MooTools shows great passion for the language on the whole.

    He’s maybe a little too enthusiastic about football, but I think we can forgive that!

  • http://www.bionicworks.com Thai Bui

    I actually go and frequently check out these JS super ninjas. John Resig’s processing.js project is an interesting read.

  • http://www.cancelbubble.com cancel bubble

    What a sausage fest, Rebecca Murphy is a good source as well, http://blog.rebeccamurphey.com/

  • Rizky Syazuli

    i have to add Hakim El Hattab (@hakimel) to this list. used to be the lead interactive developer at F-I (the agency behind 20 things I’ve learned). his work is awesome and he tweets lot’s of interesting links..

  • Alan Byers

    In addition to Rebecca and Paul, don’t forget @SlexAxton (Alex Sexton)

  • http://jonahlyngilstrap.com Jonahlyn Gilstrap

    Another vote to add Rebecca Murphey to this list. There needs to be at least one woman…

  • http://twitter.com/louis_remi Louis-Rémi Babé

    And what about my two other favorite Paul?
    @pbakaus & @paulrouget
    Too european to be listed here? ;^)

  • lazukars

    @kangax is a must. This kid is one of, if not the best JavaScript developers around.

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way

      Yeah – I agree. Let’s get him added to the list.

      • http://www.ssiddharth.com Siddharth
        Author

        He’s already on the list — Juriy Zaytsev. :)

  • http://o2v.net Andrei

    Good stuff, but… please add @davidwalshblog FTW! and @scott_gonzalez

  • http://www.sebastianoarmelibattana.com Sebastiano Armeli

    I would definitely add David Walsh (@davidwalshblog), Addy Osmani (@addyosmani),
    Kyle Simpson (@getify) and Alex Sexton(@SlexAxton) to this list. Kit Goncharov (@kitgoncharov), only 17-years old, looks interesting as well.

  • ano

    Dominic Szablewski: http://www.phoboslab.org/ – developer of the game engine “Impact JS”. He also won Mozilla’s User Choice Award with his game called “Z-Type” :)

  • http://nvmind.com Alex

    Rebecca M needs to be on the list.

  • http://www.steweb.it Stefano Ceschi Berrini

    Very good article.. But in the list you are missing David Walsh (@davidwalshblog)!!!!! He created and currently maintain the best and most useful blog for front-end developers! DW #FTW

  • http://nathansweet.me Nathan Sweet

    This list is lifted straight off of Rey Bango’s website, from his Dec. 15th post.

    • http://www.ssiddharth.com Siddharth
      Author

      Lifted is a very strong word in this context. The reason this list *resembles* that, and a LOT of other lists, is because the devs here are widely regarded for their technical knowledge.

      • http://nathansweet.me Nathan Sweet

        Sorry about that man, I should have been more careful with my words. You’re right the two lists are similar, but not exact.

  • http://www.agroism.com Chad

    DOM manipulation is sure represented well here.

    +1 for Aaron Newton @anutron
    clientcide.com
    +1 for Ryan Florence @
    ryanflorance.com
    +1 for Mark Obcena @keeto
    keetology.com

  • http://addyosmani.com Addy Osmani

    I just wanted to say a big thank you to Jeff and everyone that asked for me to be on this list. I’m honored to even be considered :)

    I would also add that guys like:

    @SlexAxton (Alex Sexton), @ajpiano (Adam Sontag), @rwaldron (Rick Waldron) are simply amazing in their own right when it comes to JS and they’re also worth a follow.

  • http://www.jabcreations.com/ John A. Bilicki III

    jQuery != JavaScript, it’s a subset (as XHTML is to XML), it adds 70KB in every instance I’ve seen it implemented easily alienating dial-up users (and every time I’ve encountered it I’ve only seen 70KB version), it creates way more problems than it solves, it relies on junk like innerHTML and worst of all it’s pushed on to new programmers who want to do something as simple as changing a className. I’ve had so many people say they want module X (e.g. WordPress) to have theme A work with plug-in B and there were two copies of jQuery…the whole WordPress / frameworks landscape is about as synchronized as drunks on ice in outer-space when instead you’re trying to visually achieve Shakespeare.

    I don’t like frameworks in general and don’t see the point because by the time anyone has invested to truly take advantage of the given framework they could have solved all their issues without it and the excessive bandwidth and CPU load penalties. This is not to say I dislike that people work on frameworks because there are going to be plenty of scenarios I personally have not encountered that they might actually be beneficial though for all real-life scenarios I’ve found the dependence on frameworks to be the greatest impedance to progress and progress is what we programmers are all about!

    Also innerHTML has to die as it also creates issues especially with AJAX and accessibility. I understand it’s appeal to newer programmers though once most people get truly experienced they started writing functions that automate much of what they’re doing and that should include things like working with the DOM.

    Dean Edwards and Mark Wilton-Jones get a lot of my respect. I found Dean’s insight helpful a few years ago (I don’t come across his work very often any more) and why am I the first one to mention Mark Wilton-Jones? His site is absolutely invaluable when trying to learn to work with the DOM.

    I don’t know a lot of the others who are listed there however I’ll take a look and follow those who post without laming out with frameworks and instead write about actual code.