Over the past few years, my RSS feed has begun to fill up with a number of amazing and inspiring web developers, entrepreneurs, and bloggers. I encountered most of them while researching a question or issue I've had, and they provided me with a clean website and a succinct answer. I've learned so much from them that thought it would be nice to share a list of them with you today.
If you've seen that familiar RSS symbol on blogs around the internet but are not familiar with how to utilize it, I wrote an article about what RSS feeds are, and how to follow someone with an RSS feed reader. I find it's the easiest and least annoying way to follow a blog, though you can also choose to sign up for email newsletters or bookmark them.
This is by no means an extensive list, and I'm sure I've forgotten plenty of people that have helped or inspire me, but I'll keep a look out and make another post like this next year.
Leo Babauta
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits is not a programmer or web developer, but I had to put him at the top of the list. So much of what he has written has inspired me, from the uncopyright on his blog, to his thoughts on goals, minimalism, finances, healthy eating, and happiness. Leo has been writing consistently on those topics and more since 2006 and has managed to turn it into viable source of income to sustain himself and his family. Advice to My Kids is a good article to summarize what he's all about.
Derek Sivers
I discovered Derek Sivers through Leo's now page, and spent the next several hours reading through many of his articles and gleaning invaluable insights on life. An exceedingly simple facade hides a wealth of knowledge and observations from this entrepreneur and student of life. Derek often aspires to give a different and unique point of view. Hell yeah is a philosophy of his that I subscribe to. Another ad-free website full of valuable content - starting to see a pattern of what I aspire to?
Sara Soueidan
Sara is an independent front-end developer, author and speaker. She has written a number of books on development, has worked with Smashing Magazine and Codrops, and has an impressive portfolio of speaking, podcasts, and other work. Sara is the original author of the CSS Reference. Everything that she authors impresses me, and she's a verible encyclopedia on knowledge of accessibility and SVGs.
Gordon Zhu
Gordon is the founder and instructor of Watch and Code, straightforward and complete guides to development. I highly recommend checking out his JavaScript course - which also happens to be free. Gordon has a personal interest in making sure all his students are getting the most out of his course and fully understanding the content.
Una Kravetz
Una is a UI Engineer over at Digital Ocean, a company I'm rather fond of. She has a very fun and unique style, and also has the added feature of spoken versions of her blog posts! She can always be found on her own Podcast or as a guest on other web development postcasts, and has a fantastic amount of CSS, Sass, and design related knowledge.
Nicolás Bevacqua
Nicolás Bevacqua of Pony Foo has one of the most unique blog styles I've ever seen. Pony Foo is a huge repository of all things JavaScript - task runners, Node, ES6, advanced concepts - you name it, Nicolás has written about it. He also has an extremely impressive collection of open source projects.
Todd Motto
Todd is an Angular developer at Google. I learned how to build my first responsive navigation bar from him a few years ago. He also created the HTML5 Blank WordPress "theme", which taught me alot about the essentials of WordPress theming. I have yet to use Angular, but I know the first place I'll look if I ever decide to.
Dave Gamache
The original creator of the Skeleton framework, Dave Gamache worked at Twitter and Medium. Although Skeleton is wildly out of date, I learned how to make my first grid and as a result, learned responsive design, by studying Skeleton's source code. It looks like he's currently working on a neat product called Launchday.
Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy is the creator of a number of extremely useful resources, such as Marksheet, HTML Reference, CSS Reference, and the always impressive Web Design in 4 Minutes.
Jonathan Suh
I found Jon while researching JSON Loops with PHP/JavaScript. I was impressed by how clean and well-organized his blog and website is. He accomplished something I've always struggled with - making a blog colorful while still minimalist. He has a host of useful posts on JavaScript and Sass.
Jeffrey Way
Jeffrey is the creator of Laracasts, and is an amazing teacher for all things PHP and Laravel. He is very good at overcoming the curse of knowledge, and his resources are beginner, intermediate, and advanced friendly.
Mark Myers
Mark is an amazing teacher who has written about JavaScript, jQuery, and HTML/CSS. I think his methods of teaching and learning are the best way to retain information and I highly recommend his books to anyone that asks for a recommendation, especially if you have no experience with prior programming languages. I'm always keeping a look to see if he's written a new book I can learn from.
Dee Dreslough
I've been on the Internet for a long time. A long, long time. Back in 1998, young Tania - who could always be found drawing dragons - found the website of an artist who also loved drawing dragons. Nearly two decades later, I remembered something I read on her website that always stuck with me, so I scoured the internet for hours to find her website, and somehow it's still there. This FAQ planted a seed in my mind that has shaped the way I see art, ownership, and sharing my creations.
I share my art because so many other people have shared with me. People are sharing with you right now, and you may not even know it.
Chris Guillebeau
Another case of early inspiration, I read Chris's book The Art of Non-Conformity when I decided on a career change. He has accomplished many things I strive for - making an income without a full-time job, podcasting, side hustles, and traveling the world. I'm only just starting to act on some of the concepts I read about back then, but it's a slow and steady process.
Conclusion
Of course, there are a few more big names in the web development world that you may already know that I'll mention: Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks, David Walsh, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror, and Eric Elliott the JavaScript master, and Wes Bos.
I hope you find encouragement and motivation through some of these influential people as I have!