Who are your rock star developers?

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Creative Commons: https://j.mp/1lLn7bu

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I know; many people don't like this rock star or ninja terms to qualify an exceptional developer, but it's still a good way to share the information. Actually, I don't know why people don't like it, but it's not the topic of this post. Whether they are local people, worldwide famous, or maybe the hero only known by you, who are your rock star developers? You know the person that have a good expertise on a particular technology? The developer who releases amazing project on GitHub? The people with an amazing resume on LinkedIn? Maybe it's a speaker you saw at the last conference you attended? One of your co-workers that helped you last time you had a terrific bug you weren't able to solve? I want to hear your, and know these people as their story: whether they like it or not, if you quality them as the person they are, you may not be the only one, and that means they probably have a strong brand.

Personally, I can think about many personality in the IT industry that either I know personally or that I follow what they are doing. They are people I respect for their work, and whom I think have a strong branding when it comes to the developer world. You probably even know some or most of them. Think about Christian Heilmann, who is now a Technical Evangelist, but for me, we, Evangelists,  are still developers: web is the keyword I attached to his name.  What about Paul Irish from Google? Everything standard or frameworks like Modernizr. Lea Verou who is always see as a designer, but in fact, is a developer and is a reference when it comes to CSS. Did you say Jeffrey Zeldman, the godfather of the web standard? I have many more, as Brendan Eich, Ethan Marcotte, Jonathan Leblanc, Rey Bango, Paul Rouget...

Do you know some? Who are they? What did they do? What impress you about them? Tell me their story...