The problem with learning code from one source and a list of awesome developers you need to be following

#frontend #learning #css #javascript

“The ONLY course you’ll ever need to learn X”

We’ve all seen/heard that sales pitch on coding courses before. As an instructor myself, a little piece of me dies inside whenever I hear another teacher make this claim.

I’ve always believed that anyone wanting to develop a well-rounded knowledge of a subject should try to learn from as many different sources/instructors as possible. Even if they’re learning the same subject numerous times.

Hearing one person’s perspective and way of explaining a topic gives you an extremely narrow glimpse behind the curtains. Whereas, hearing multiple people explaining concepts in different ways can lead to a much deeper understanding.

Therefore, whenever my students ask me who they should know about to continue their learning, I provide them with a list of amazing developers and instructors to follow and learn from.

So, in no particular order, here’s my list of the people I think every front-end developer should follow, along with the best places to find them online.

I hope you find it useful!

The List

Jen Simmons

Website | Twitter | YouTube | Podcast
Jen is a member of the CSS Working Group and a prominent figure in the front-end community. Her Layout Land YouTube channel is an amazing resource for anyone looking to improve their CSS Grid knowledge.

Wes Bos

Website | Twitter | YouTube | Podcast
Wes is an extremely engaging instructor with a mixture of free and premium online courses. His JavaScript 30 course alone has had more than 200,000 sign ups! He’s also a co-host of the Syntax podcast, which covers all kinds of web development goodness.

Sarah Drasner

Website | Twitter | YouTube
If you’re into web animation, Sarah Drasner is someone you need to be following. Her conference talks on YouTube especially are a goldmine of knowledge. She also writes a lot and is a Staff Writer for CSS-Tricks.

Sara Vieira

Website | Twitter | YouTube | Medium
Sara is an extremely talented JavaScript developer who has some great talks on YouTube. She also created Awesome Talks, which is an website full of…you guessed: awesome tech talks!

Scott Tolinski

Website | Twitter | YouTube | Podcast
Scott is another instructor who drops knowledge bombs left right and centre. He’s the creator of Level Up Tutorials, which has a huge catalogue of courses and is also the co-host of the Syntax podcast.

Stephen Grider

Website | Twitter
Stephen Grider is a brilliant instructor who uses Udemy as his platform for teaching. He constantly brings out high-quality courses and has a great way of explaining concepts so that the content actually sticks.

Val Head

Website | Twitter | YouTube
Val Head is a designer and web animation expert who has some brilliant talks on YouTube and is very active on the conference circuit. She’s got a weekly UI Animation Newsletter that I would highly recommend signing up to.

Rachel Andrew

Website | Twitter | YouTube
Rachel is editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, a member of the CSS Working Group and is a source of extremely in-depth knowledge about CSS. She’s another key person to follow if you’re learning CSS Grid.

Dan Abramov

Twitter | YouTube
Dan is the co-author of Redux and Create React App. He currently works at Facebook as a member of the React team. Needless to say he’s a great person to follow for all things JavaScript (especially React)!

Jonas Schmedtmann

Website | Twitter
Jonas is another brilliant instructor who uses Udemy as his platform for teaching. He’s got a great course on more advanced CSS and Sass for any front-end devs looking to take their styling to the next level.

Lea Verou

Website | Twitter | YouTube
Lea is an amazing developer whose project list of contributions to the web community is as impressive as any that I’ve seen. She is a member of the CSS Working Group and watching her talks on YouTube is always time well spent!

Sara Soueidan

Website | Twitter | YouTube
Sara has an incredible talent for not only web development, but also public speaking. Her talks are always extremely insightful, packed full of takeaways. She has a strong focus on responsive design, performance, and accessibility, so follow her if you need to learn more on those topics.

Chris Coyier

Wesbite | Twitter | YouTube | Podcast
Chris Coyier is the creator of CSS-Tricks and the co-founder of CodePen. He’s also co-host of the podcast Shop Talk, which talks about the latest in both web design and development.

David Walsh

Website | Twitter
If you try and Google your way out of a JavaScript problem, it’s often an article by David Walsh that will come to the rescue. His blog is an unbelievable resource and he is definitely someone to follow if you work with JavaScript on a regular basis.

Addy Osmani

Website | Twitter | YouTube | Medium
Addy Osmani works on the Chrome dev team and is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to web performance. If you want your content to load fast, you need to read his articles and watch his talks.

Estelle Weyl

Website | Twitter | YouTube
If you care about web performance and accessibility (and if you don’t you should!), then Estelle Weyl is someone you need to know about. Estelle has authored and co-authored some incredible books, that are essential reading for front-end devs.

Brad Traversy

Website | Twitter | YouTube
Brad is an awesome JavaScript instructor who mostly teaches full-stack JS on Udemy. His courses are extremely detailed and he has a great way of making complex concepts simple to understand.

Suggestions welcome

This list is by no means an exhaustive list of the amazing developers and instructors out there. It’s just my recommendations of some great people for my students (and other developers) to follow.

If you have anyone to add, please write in the comments.