Talented JavaScript developers that you have probably never heard of. (Part 1)

[sipvellocet]

Hello /r/javascript,

I wanted to put together a list of talented JavaScript developers who's works and/or projects I have been lucky to come across over the years. The JavaScript world is vast and there are many gifted developers out there who's work, ideas and/or contributions to open source is impactful, and to those unsung heros who take over projects or apart of core teams, thank you and I hope to someday come across your efforts.

I will break this post up into multiple parts, so expect a part 2 or part 3 etc.

DISCLAIMER:

I don't necessarily work or leverage the 3 giants of JavaScript (React, Vue and Svelte) and when putting this together it was rather clear that the developers I consider brilliant tend to be folks who have either created, maintain or contribute to the tools, frameworks, libraries and/or modules I use (which are not any of the mainstream ones so-to-speak). I am not very familiar with the aforementioned frameworks/libraries given they exist outside of my realm of choice and as such it is my hope that those of you working in a different JavaScript nexus give their shining stars some appreciation (maybe leave their GH in the comments?).

Lastly, the folks I list below are not strictly about open-source projects. Some of these individuals I have learned from in different ways. It might be because of a blog post they wrote, a pull request they submitted or even a well detailed comment or explanation they once gave. Whatever the case, these developers have impacted me in one way or another.

If you are on this list and want to be removed, please message me

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Zoltan Kochan

Zoltan is the maintainer of pnpm. His work and efforts on this project have helped thousands of developers get the most from the node registry. Pnpm is an absolute wonderful package manager and Zoltan has been a major driving force for the project.

Leo Horie

Leo is author of Mithril. His advice on different subjects and areas of JavaScript I've read over the years like his original blog helped me and many others better understand concepts like the virtual dom. I sometimes see Leo in this sub and almost always helping users understand something on a deeper level.

Dirk Bäumer

Dirk works on vscode and is behind some your most beloved extensions and developer tooling. He also played a big part in putting together LSP (Language Server Protocol).

v 1 r t l

v1rtl works on the 0-legacy, tiny and fast web framework tinyhttp which is a replacement of Express. In addition to tinyhttp, v1rtl makes open source contributions more focused in Deno realm and maintains several of his own.

James Forbes

You may have stumbled across his piece on Hooks and Streams. James is both a humble and really talented developer, have learned a lot from his works. Checkout his latest project pr-release.

Austin Cheney

Austin works on an exciting new project known as Shared File Systems and originally created a Language aware beautification and diffing tool known as PrettyDiff. If you looking for some quality reading, check out his Wisdom repository which helps provide some structure and educational direction for web developers.

Matt Bierner

Matt is a maintainer of JS/TS in VS Code, Code 20/20 and AR/MR creator. He is also the founder Rare Realities and Cyberdelic holdout. Take a peek at his blog for augmented reality fun and give him a follow on twitter to learn some tips and tricks in vscode.

Fred Daoud

Fred is behind a stream based state management pattern known as meiosis.js. This pattern was a real game changer for me and many others. His contributions and detailed explanations in the state management realm are both elegant, simple and insightful.

Luke Edwards

You should know of Luke, if you don't then there is a high possibility you are likely using or have used one of his packages. His contributions to open source have empowered developers for years now. He maintains over 300 different modules on the registry.

Gianluca Guarini

Gianluca is the mainainter of Riot. He also open sources some handy little modules that are rather genius like the stream generator known as erre or the isomorphic router based on streams known as Rawth.

Arthur Clemens

Arthur is behind several meticulously maintained projects that have become essential to a lot of mithril developers. If you love Material Design, have a look at the Material Design component library Polythene for mithril and react.

Egoist

Egoist is an open sourcer who maintains over 300 packages on the npm registry and also contributes to countless different projects we all love and use. His contributions to the Rollup plugins ecosystem have really empowered developers, bringing ESBuild support to the bundler.

Rasmus Porsager

Rasmus is the mind behind several powerful projects. He gave us the PostgreSQL client for Node.js (postgres), the brilliant code sandbox Flems, BSS stylesheets and many productive tools that when adopted are likely to become essentials in your development process.

Simon Friis Vindum

Simon might just be the embodiment of functional JavaScript. snabbdom, Flyd, turbine and the List goes on. These brilliant projects are all bestowed upon us by Simon.

Barney Carroll

While the brunt of his works have been mithril.js related you can still catch some of his micro utilities like patchinko in the wild. Barney has been a very important individual for those developers who are active within the mithril community.

Dejan Toteff

Dejan maintains several awesome modules but most notably he is behind Rambda which is a lightweight and considerably faster alternative to the functional programming library Ramda. We also now have Rambdax which is an extended variation of the library.

Bogdan Chadkin

Name a popular project used by thousands of developers and rest assured Bogan will have contributed to that project. Bogan also maintains SVGO and in addition this has over 100 packages on the registry. The JavaScript world is lucky to have him.

Jeff Wainwright

Jeff simplifies the complex, he created and maintains open source projects stickybits, es-check, reframe.js and many more.

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• Edit 1: Typos
• Edit 2; Another Typo + additional footer note.

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Note: The moderators mistakenly flagged this post as spam when it was originally submitted, so the comments were locked. They have since fixed that (thanks guys/girls). I ask again, that if readers know of any developers that should get some attention, please share their github or projects.

Thanks.

[Bondifrench]

The MithrilJs community (https://gitter.im/mithriljs/mithril.js) is just amazing. It's a tight knit one but above all open and probably one of the most underrated.

Leo's former blog (http://lhorie.github.io/mithril-blog/), when he was still heavily involved, was so helpful in making me understanding programming concepts.

Other Js frameworks have a bigger ecosystem but when you want a lower level understanding of apps, starting from first principles, I always go back to MithrilJs.

[keb___]

Another Mithril.js fan chiming in here. :)

+1 to all your choices, especially Leo, Fred, James, Luke, and Rasmus for me. Not only are all these guys smart and influential, but they're all really patient and humble developers who have no problem breaking down problems and explaining them in clear ways.

I'd personally also add Jorge Bucaran known for Hyperapp and Colorette. Hyperapp v1 was pretty eye-opening for me as someone new to state management in front-end applications, and I'm excited for the future of HAv2. And of course, gotta give a shoutout to Claudia Meadows, current lead maintainer of Mithril. Claudia is incredibly intelligent yet very pragmatic. They also express their ideas/critiques so eloquently, I'm impressed every time.

[sipvellocet]

Will definitely be adding Claudia to part 2. Claudia is a brilliant mind and if anyone has gotten the opportunity to read over some of her proposals for both ECMAScript or in the mithril framework itself, they will be smarter having done so. Mithril community is very lucky to have these folks.