Ask HN: Which hackers should I be following these days?

90 pointsianlotinsky7y ago12 comments

10-15 years ago, I worked a corporate job, which I genuinely enjoyed for many reasons. While there, my imagination and energy exploded as I discovered and drank up all that Joel Spolsky, Paul Graham, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Jeff Atwood, and Michael Lopp had to write. It was a renaissance for the industry and for me personally. Their thoughts introduced and propelled me into the software startup world, made me a valuable asset to my employers, and led to me being in leadership positions. I'm looking for that sort of learning and insight again but not really finding it organically. These greats certainly haven't lost their mojo. They weren't a fad like most thinkers and writers online are or have been. I'm simply wondering if there are additional folks I should be following this decade because they're building the next renaissance.

Please list any up-and-coming changemakers you follow below.

Thanks!

12 comments

swaggyBoatswain7y ago

I had a list assembled from my blog page here http://vincentmtang.com/inspiration/

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Chris Coyier - Creator of codepen, his idea of micro-services speaks mimics my own thought processes

Tania Rascia -Webdeveloper who has great eye for design, simple bullshit free site with great tutorials

James Burton -Youtuber who makes all sorts of awesome robots, BB2 from starwars and bostondynamic replicas.

Devon Zuegel - Big fan of her writing style and her way of thinking, in some ways they mimic my own

David K Piano - developer who just does magic with CSS / react, and plays the piano

Joshua Oluwagbemiga - Nigerian Developer who gets what the future of UX should look like and is able to create that mockup experience

Sirupsen - Shopify Developer Lead who has great design philosophies

Sindre Sorhus - Opensource NodeJS developer who has built hundreds of libraries used today

Jeremy Thomas - The CSS Guru who knows how to architect complex CSS structure

Jen Simmons - Mozilla Designer Advocate, someone who actually understands design philosophy and its history.

Destin Sandlin - Creator of Smarter Every Day, someone who is passionate about sharing and exploring engineering principles

Mark Rober - Same as above

Tom Scott - Same as above, but more cultural and computerscience topics

Gordon Zhu - Exgoogler who is a fantastic teacher in software design practices & workflows

Xavier Decuyper - Youtuber who makes well explained Cryptocurrency Tutorials

Derek Banas - Youtuber who makes tutorials on every programming languages in existence + cooking

Michael Nielsen YC combinator researcher- I enjoy reading his work related to augmentive cognition and neuroscience

Glutanimate - Medical Professional / Python developer who makes popular plugins for anki, space-repetition learning software

Patrick Shyu- -Youtuber who runs Tech Lead. Feels like an older, more matured / intelligent version of myself

Casey Neistat - Well known youtube vlogger, someone who appreciates in telling stories first before tools

Mattias Petter Johansson - Youtuber who runs FunFunFunction, someone who understands the simplicity of tools in complex dev environments ("tooling maintenance cost")

Grant Sanderson - Youtuber who makes 3blue1brown, some of the best youtube math videos to date.

Teran Van Hemert - Video editor for Linus Tech Tips, his enthusiasm of macros and workflows resemble my own

Evan & Katlyn - Possibly best youtube makerspace videos / small industrial fabrication, I have 1000+ subbed channels and subbed when they were nothing, their marketing execution & creativity is unparalled. I don't give compliments like this often either.

Peter Levels - Pretty famous for being a mostly 1 man successful startup scene. Someone who really gets tech solves business problems, not the other way around

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All the people you mentioned are famous, but I'm following a mix of rapidly growing underdogs / semifamous people in multiple industries. Each person was carefully chosen in their respective field, because I want a good mix of backgrounds. When you get to the very top, things become stagnant, you might not be innovating anymore, rather just repeating yourself from past experience. Its like a rapper who becomes famous and can't write songs anymore, because he's so out of touch from what his humble beginnings were.

I can tell just seeing a bit of their work that they are truly unique different & innovative, and offer insights no one else has. I'm always collecting a LOT of data so I'm always curating the best people to follow.

I can just tell who speaks from mountains of wisdom/experience VS who does not. When you start reflecting on yourself, it becomes obvious which people worth following have as well.

ex3xu7y ago

Interesting list. Quick thought, if you're going to maintain a web page like this, considering adding links for the convenience of people you share it with. Also helps with SEO for the targets.

swaggyBoatswain7y ago

yea I need to do that, haven't gotten around to it :)

turbo_fart_box7y ago

Nintendo switch hacker.

Take a look at Michael (@SciresM): https://twitter.com/SciresM?s=09

arisAlexis7y ago

The word hacker has many meanings. To me it never changed meaning something like MoD or CDC and not startup innovators.

laurentl7y ago

I recently discovered Erik Dietrich (daedtech.com) and it’s induced the same kind of splurge reading as when I discovered Joel on Software. Lots of stuff on what’s broken about developers’ place in the corporate world and what to do about it.

distrorepoman7y ago

the hackers you really should be following are not indexed on any search engine, since ANI trunking on PSTN took off the BBS scene has come back and is thriving. use a fax machine and do a PBX number walk and you will be propelled into a new world.

BTW what does anybody else here think about the concept that shadowbanning leads to creation of an egregious number of throwaway sock puppet accounts on HN?

superflit7y ago

No need to use a fax machine to number walk..

Remember ToneLoc?

War Dialers?

?N-?

nuthersox7y ago

yes throwaway accounts evade the shadowban

cliffwarden7y ago

Ben Heck

Console mods, general hacks and pinball!

adiusmus7y ago

Did he really get stopped at the Canadian border for pinball hacking or similar?

73737373737y ago

Christopher Domas is quite entertaining

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