30 World-Class JS and Node.JS Developers to Follow in 2021

Kumar Harsh  on March 11, 2021

JavaScript has taken the software world by storm. There’s a JavaScript framework for literally any platform that you can think of. Mobile, web, desktop, you name it, JS has it. Given the huge gamut of real-life applications scattered around the technical world, some of the greatest developers use JS and Node in their day-to-day jobs. From building cheeky front-end applications to robust back-end systems, JavaScript and Node.JS take application development to a whole new level.

In this article, we take a look at some of the most prominent personalities in the JavaScript & NodeJS universe, from public speakers and bloggers to founders and lead developers!

Feel free to use these links to navigate the collection:

Javascript and Node.js News, Blogs, and Resources

Addy Osmani 

Addy Osmani is an engineer at Google. He leads a Web Performance and Tools team and has worked on top projects like Lighthouse, PageSpeed, and Chrome User Experience Reports. He loves to contribute to open-source projects and has worked on popular open-source projects including the likes of Lighthouse, TodoMVC, and Material Design Lite.

When not writing code, Addy loves creating content on the subject. He has authored premier JavaScript books that include Essential Image Optimization and Learning JavaScript Design Patterns. He loves delivering talks across the world, and actively shares them on his YouTube channel. He often stars on several popular YouTube channels talking about the latest trends in JavaScript. To top all these off, he has a detailed blog on which he talks about Web Performance and JavaScript apps.

Apart from Twitter, Addy is also active on YouTube and GitHub. Feel free to check out his profiles across the web! 

Akshay Saini

Akshay Saini is one of the software engineers at Uber India. He is highly skilled in JavaScript and other related web technologies. He loves to mentor young minds and has a huge following of undergrads and newbie developers who are looking to start their journey as software developers.

Akshay loves to create quality content, and he is highly active on LinkedIn. He posts a lot of videos as well as written content over YouTube and LinkedIn. His recent video series Namaste JavaScript was a major hit and covered a lot of in-depth concepts of JavaScript.

Apart from YouTube and LinkedIn, Akshay is active on Twitter as well. Feel free to go through his content if you are beginning your journey in JavaScript!

Alex Grigoryan

Alex Grigoryan is the Vice President of Engineering, Customer Experience at Walmart. He is passionate about NodeJS and ReactJS and often tweets some great insights on the practical applications of JavaScript.

Being the variegated guy that he is, Alex often creates short content on the business application and impact of JavaScript and JavaScript-based frameworks like Node, React, Angular, etc. He is a renowned speaker and has addressed the audience at premier events such as NodeSummit and Open Source Leadership Summit. He is an avid content creator on Medium and publishes some of the crispest articles on web performance and JavaScript.

Apart from Twitter, Alex is active on Medium and LinkedIn too. Feel free to scroll through his content to understand the world of web applications from a business perspective!

Axel Rauschmayer

Axel Rauschmayer is a very experienced developer and has been developing web applications since 1995. He loves delivering talks and workshops at conferences and has been doing it since 2006 till date.

Axel has a Ph.D. in Informatics and has written quite many books on JavaScript. He has written a book on each version of ECMA and has also authored Tackling TypeScript, a top seller in the field of JavaScript development. He has a seasoned knowledge of JavaScript and other related frameworks. He offers a lot of resources to help you get going with JavaScript, irrespective of the amount of experience you have with the language.

You can follow him on Twitter and his blog to keep up with his latest content and talks!

Benedikt Meurer

Benedikt Meurer is a software engineer at Google in Munich, Germany. Benedikt works on the V8 JavaScript Engine as a tech lead for the JavaScript execution optimization team. Previously, he has worked as a software developer for os-cillation GmbH till 2013.

Benedikt loves to contribute to open-source projects. In recent years, he has shifted his focus from free desktop application development to Cocoa and CocoaTouch app development for Mac OS X, and iOS. He is currently the official maintainer of the ARM port as well.

You can find Benedikt on Twitter, Github, and his personal blog. If you are into web performance and open-source development, you can not miss out on following Benedikt for such content.

Brendan Eich

Brendan Eich is often informally referred to as the father of JavaScript, as he had originally written Mocha, the scripting language that was later renamed as JavaScript. A list of JS developers to follow would always be incomplete without the person who started it all. Brendan co-founded the Mozilla Project, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla Corporation. He has served as the CTO and CEO of the corporations as well.

While Eich’s insights carry enormous value for developers of all domains, his expertise makes the most sense for JavaScript developers. Unlike experts from some other domains, Eich rarely sounds too preachy or down-right technical. His tweets are full of wit, entertainment, and practicality.

Feel free to check out his content on Twitter, where he shares ground-breaking insights into JavaScript, as a creator of the language himself!

Cassidy Williams

Cassidy Williams is one of the most fun developers to follow. She works as a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify and is highly skilled in JavaScript and other programming languages. Her Twitter profile is full of fun experiences she has had over her journey in the tech space.

Cassidy is an avid speaker and has held the stage in events like Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, TEDx, NextJSConf, and other technical events. In her words, she wants “to inspire generations of STEM students to be the best they can”. She has created several online classes on Udemy, Skillshare, and other similar platforms, and she also runs a weekly newsletter that helps people become better coders.

Apart from Twitter, Cassidy is active on GitHub and Patreon. She offers a variety of services including resume review, mock interviews, etc on her Discord server. Feel free to check her profile out if you are looking for pointers in the world of JavaScript!

Charlie Gerard

Charlie Gerard is a senior front-end developer at Netlify. She is a Google Developer Expert in web technologies as well. She has a profound interest in machine learning and hardware.

She has authored Practical Machine Learning in JavaScript, which focuses on explaining how machine learning can be used on the web by using Tensorflow.js, a JavaScript port for the popular machine learning library. Charlie loves speaking at conferences at writing blog posts for the community. When not working or helping the community, Charlie loves to explore creative ideas that can be built using JavaScript. Her projects’ page demonstrates her creative thinking as well as her technical prowess.

Feel free to check her profile out on Twitter, GitHub, and Medium. If you often look for content that is technical as well as fun at the same time, you would not want to miss her wall out!

Chris Heilmann

Chris Heilmann is a Principal Program Manager for Browser Tools at Microsoft. Also, he has authored Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional.

Chris loves to write about technology. He has his own blog where he posts articles regularly, and his Medium and Dev profiles where he puts content occasionally. His content is centered around Developer Tools, Developer Relations, AI, JavaScript, and Accessibility.

Feel free to check out his Twitter, LinkedIn, Dev.to, and Medium profiles. You are bound to find something that catches your attention!

Dan Abramov

Dan Abramov is a Software Engineer at Facebook. He has worked as a part of the React Core team to develop the popular open-source UI framework. While at Facebook, he co-created Redux, the open-source library for managing application state, and Create React App, the popular toolchain to initialize React projects easily and smoothly.

Dan has featured in a great number of podcasts and conferences on React and related technologies. In his blog overreacted.io, he writes on React and JavaScript, and the internals of the web. He is an instructor on egghead.io and has been a prominent speaker in the JSConf Iceland in 2018.

Apart from Twitter, Dan is active on GitHub and StackOverflow. Feel free to check out his blog for content on React and web performance!

Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson is a Software Engineer in a Memphis-based company. He also hosts a Google Developer Group in the Greater Memphis Area, and he is known for the community work that he loves to do. He has helped more than 40 people find their first job in tech. Before working as a software engineer, he worked at a gas station where he used to fry chicken. His journey from there to the world of tech is one of the most motivating ones to date.

Danny loves to help other people out. He is skilled in front-end technologies and often posts motivational as well as technical content via his tweets and blog. If you are interested to know how he made it, you can check out his YouTube channel.

Danny is active on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Feel free to take a look at his profile if you’re just into the world of STEM, and are looking for a motivational anchor for your journey!

David Walsh

David Walsh is a Senior Software Engineer at MetaMask, a crypto wallet for BitCoin. David has worked for Mozilla and SitePen in the past, and during his tenure at Mozilla, he has been an exquisite advocate of open-source software. He has been the core developer for MooTools JavaScript Framework,  which is a collection of JavaScript utilities for intermediate to advanced developers.

David loves creating content and has a blog of his own. He also authors guest posts on several other tech blogs. He is an avid speaker and has delivered talks in events including London AJAX, AustinJS, and Snow*Mobile.

David is highly active on Twitter and GitHub. You can also view his LinkedIn profile here. Feel free to check his links out if you are looking for outlooks full of personal and professional experience!

Emma Bostian

Emma Bostian is a software engineer at Spotify in Sweden. She has worked with IBM and LogMeIn in the past and is among some of the strongest women in tech. She loves creating content on interview preparation and software development alike.

She has authored Decoding the Technical Interview Process, which was a great seller as soon as it came out. She runs multiple email courses, and has also created technicalinterviews.dev, and compiled.blog where she posts quality content on interview preparation and front-end development. She has been an instructor on several learning platforms that include LinkedIn Learning, egghead, and Frontend Masters.

If you are looking for career guidance, and love JavaScript as well, make sure to check out Emma’s journey so far. You can find her on Twitter and her blog.

Elijah Manor

Elijah Manor is a senior software engineer at LeanKit, an author on PluralSight, and a web development expert. With a keen interest in front-end development, Elijah is a JavaScript expert and a mature blogger, speaker, and trainer.

Elijah is a Microsoft MVP and an instructor on egghead.io. He is very active in the developer community, and he does not miss out on putting code even in his Twitter bio!

You can find Elijah on almost every other platform - Twitter, YouTube, GitHub, and LinkedIn. If you are into short bite-sized content on technical topics, make sure to stop by at his profile!

John Resig

John Resig is the creator of the jQuery library in JavaScript. He is one of the staff software engineers at Khan Academy. He strives to provide everyone with free education. He has contributed to more than one aspect of the product - mobile, accessibility, math problems, computer programming, performance, etc.

John has authored several books on technical topics, that include Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja, Pro JavaScript Techniques, The GraphQL Guide.

John interacts with his 260k+ followers on Twitter, on topics like JavaScript and web development. Feel free to check it out if you are into web applications built with JavaScript!

Karolina Szczur

Karolina Szczur is a Product Design Lead at Calibre. She is currently focused on building efficient design systems. She loves product designing inside out. She has also been a front-end engineer, so she understands the gap between design and implementation, and is able to use this to improve her product design game.

She is an active participant in the software community, and she shows her presence by writing, speaking, mentoring, and organizing events. She has been on the organizing ends of premier events such as CSSConf and JSConf Australia.

You can find her on Twitter and her portfolio where she shares her content as well as her latest work samples. She also writes on Medium about her community activities.

Kent C. Dodds

Having previously worked at PayPal, Kent C. Dodds is now a full-time content creator. He is an avid contributor to open source, and his open-source code has been used by millions of people all over the globe.

Kent is a world-renowned speaker, teacher, and trainer. He has created two great resources for JavaScript and JavaScript-based frameworks: EpicReact.Dev and TestingJavaScript.com. He has been an instructor on multiple skilling-up platforms including egghead.io and Frontend Masters. To top it off, he is also a Google Developer Expert for web technologies. 

Kent engages very frequently on Twitter, and his blogs and tweets are equally informative!

Kyle Mathews

Kyle Mathews is the creator of GatsbyJS, a framework built for creating blazing fast websites. He founded Gatsby, the company around the GatsbyJS framework, with Sam Bhagwat. He has a great understanding of how JavaScript applications work and has been a pioneer in the efforts made to improve how pre-rendering works on the web.

Kyle works full time at Gatsby, and when he’s not working, he loves to write. You can check out his personal blog for some great takes on various topics ranging from building a product to running a company. Kyle also writes for the Gatsby blog, where he shares content on the fastest pre-rendered JavaScript framework ever.

You can find Kyle on Twitter and LinkedIn. He loves to share insights on topics ranging from getting started with learning GatsbyJS to running a brand new start-up!

Kyle Simpson

Kyle Simpson is a founder, teacher, JavaScript expert, and author. He has authored premier books that include You Don’t Know JS and Functional-Light JS.

Kyle has also created multiple courses on Front-end Masters and Vimeo. He has a very mild online presence, but you can connect with him on LinkedIn to look at the tech world through his eyes!

Loiane Groner

Loiane Groner is a software developer based in Brazil. She has been active in the tech world for more than 10 years now and is currently engaged in the role of a business analyst, and senior Java/HTML5/JavaScript developer at an American financial institution.

Loiane loves writing and coaching, and she has written a handful of books for Packt Publishing. She has addressed the audience at some conferences on Java, JavaScript, Ionic, Angular and modern development. She has also taught workshops on similar topics in Brazil and the US.

You can find out her work on Twitter (where she’s most active), GitHub, YouTube, and LinkedIn. She also has her website, where she often posts short articles on topics that she likes.

Mark Dalgleish

Mark Dalgleish is a co-creator of CSS Modules, a super handy way of splitting and loading CSS sheets on demand. On the flip-side, he loves designing UI and leads the DevOps team at SEEK.

When not working with software, Mathias loves to host and deliver talks. He is an organizer at MelbJS, Melbourne’s local JavaScript developers’ meetup, and loves to give back to the community. Mark also writes about front-end and UI technologies in his blog.

If you are interested in user interface or front-end technologies, make sure to follow Mark’s blog, Twitter and GitHub. He always has a new outlook on these every new day!

Mathias Bynens

Mathias Bynens works on Chrome DevTools and V8, Google’s high-performance open-source JavaScript engine. He is an expert in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Unicode, web performance, and security.

When not writing code, Mathias loves to write about code. His blog posts are different from others, as he follows a “note to self” way of explaining things. He discusses details like the use of globalThis polyfill, which other people usually miss out on.

Feel free to check out his Twitter, blog, or GitHub profile to keep yourselves updated on his latest gigs!

Nicole Archambault

Nicole Archambault is the founder of La Vie en Code, an educational resource dedicated to helping students learn web and other forms of development. She shifted into the tech industry in 2015, and inspired by her journey, she set out to personally coach people who are learning to code under her initiative La Vie en Code in 2016.

Nicole has been a great motivator for all those who are looking to get started in the world of tech. She has herself seen how difficult it is for non-tech people to take the choice of breaking into the world of tech in the middle of their career. La Vie en Code offers a full-fledged community of like-minded people who are taking their first steps as well and provides them with resources like coaching sessions, podcasts, blogs, and a career newsletter.

Feel free to check out her Twitter, where she frequently posts about tech and entrepreneurship. She also has a blog where she shares detailed accounts of her journey! 

Sacha Greif

Sacha Greif is a UI engineer from France, currently living in Japan. He created VulcanJS, an open-source full-stack application framework based on React, GraphQL, Meteor and MongoDB. It is equivalent to Rails for JavaScript.

Sacha has authored Discover Meteor, a book that explains the Meteor JavaScript framework to build Telescope. He loves building communities and organizes a local Hacker News meetup in his city.

You can follow him on Twitter to keep up with his content. Also, check out his blog for everything that he has created till now!

Sophie Koonin

Sophie Koonin is a senior web engineer and web discipline lead at Monzo. She advocates web accessibility and wants to keep the web fun and simple. She wants the barrier to entry for people who are interested in the web to be as low as possible.

Sophie works on React and Go technologies, and loves making music with the SHE Choir London. She is very active on GitHub, and you can easily find her working on a new, fun project if you stumble across her profile.

You can join Sophie’s 11 thousand followers on Twitter, where she talks about React, Go, and choirs!

Tanay Pratap

Tanay Pratap is an Engineer at Microsoft based in India. He has been a guiding stone to millions of students and freshers in the world of tech. Before Microsoft, he has worked at Cisco and knows full-stack development inside out.

He has a thing for coaching people and has started multiple communities to do so. He runs his bootcamp, called neogcamp. Even though you need to pay to get in, it’s more than just money. He takes in limited students via interviews and then works with them the whole year to groom them into the perfect full-stack developers.

Tanay is active on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. He creates a lot of content on various decisions that you have to make at some points along your journey in tech. He also features in a lot of podcasts, answering questions asked by people and talking about his journey as a whole.

Tom Dale

Tom Dale is a Senior Staff Engineer at LinkedIn. He has played a crucial role in creating Ember.js, the JavaScript framework used for building ambitious applications. Before working at LinkedIn, he founded Tilde, an open-source startup. He worked on their Rails profiler tool SkyLight.

Tom is an advocate of the free, independent internet. He condemns proprietary app stores that moderate content based on their own will. He has taken to the stage at many conferences, and some of the top ones include ReactiveConf and JSConf Columbia.

Feel free to join his 33 thousand+ followers on Twitter and gain an alternative view to the popular web language. If you are looking for more, check out his blog for some of the greatest takes on various topics in JavaScript.

Tracy Lee

Tracy Lee is an entrepreneur focused on technology. She has founded many ventures based on tech and has successfully built them from the ground up. She is currently the CEO of This Dot Labs, a web consulting firm built for modern times. She is a Google Developer Expert for Angular, and a Microsoft MVP as well.

Tracy loves interacting with people on the scale. She has been a keynote speaker in various events and is also a core member of the RxJS team. She loves sharing on Twitter about her entrepreneurship and career experiences. She is a must-follow if you are looking for content that is worthwhile, varied, and fun at the same time.

Trevor Norris

Trevor Norris is the Node.js maintainer at NodeSource. He maintains the Node.js project and writes new modules and updates for the open-source framework. He has worked on some of the prominent features of NodeJS that involve callback mechanics, threading, etc.

Trevor loves to write about his experiences with Node. His blog serves as the perfect almanac of his journey with Nodejs so far. He often writes about the various projects he works on, the things he likes and dislikes of the framework, and the community around it. 

On his Twitter, he shares insights on the internals of the framework, along with the cool experiments that he loves to do on it. If you are looking to learn the fundamentals of a popular server-side runtime environment, feel free to check out his profiles!

Wes Bos

Wes Bos is a full-stack JavaScript developer based out of Canada. He loves helping the community and has released a great number of courses on most JavaScript and relevant topics.

His Gatsby course, Master Gatsby, was an unbeaten bestseller on the topic. He contributes frequently to open source, so you may stumble across his code on GitHub. He also has a YouTube channel where he frequently posts JavaScript tutorials and problem solving using JavaScript. He also runs a twice-weekly podcast, which is called Syntax.

Feel free to check out his Twitter feed and YouTube channel if you are looking for quality video content to help you get started on your journey in JavaScript!