People, sites, and software I am thankful for this year
I’ve been building web applications for a dozen years now and I’m convinced there has never been a better time to be a web developer! I can’t imagine doing my job if it weren’t for the impact of some great people, sites, and software. This post isn’t a Ten Biggest style article. I won’t be thanking Tim Berners-Lee, although we all should.
Rather, this list is simply the extraordinary people and things that have made my job a joy over the past year.
People I am thankful for
John Resig
Creator of jQuery, JavaScript ninja, John casts a large shadow on the web development landscape. Looking at John’s code has taught me more about JavaScript than every book I’ve ever bought on the subject.
Chris Wanstrath aka defunkt
Half of the err the blog duo, a third of the GitHub posse, Chris is the most energetic Rubyist I’ve seen. Just watching the amount of software his company puts out will either inspire you or send you into a shame spiral.
The Less Everything guys, Steve and Allan
Makers of cool, free, and downright funny software, these guys write more less code than anybody around. I’m thankful that guys like this are around to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously.
Jean-Philippe Lang
I’ve never seen anyone single-handedly will a project into existence like JP. While there is no doubt that Redmine has a large and growing community behind it, I’m sure everyone would agree that Redmine exists because of the sheer will of Jean-Phillipe.
Sites I am thankful for
GitHub
No other technology has impacted me more this year than Git, and I don’t think it would have happened without GitHub. We first signed up for GitHub because we wanted a turnkey central repository for our projects. But GitHub is so much more. GitHub brings social networking to source control. This means you can see what other folks are working on and discover new projects and tools all the time. It also means it’s never been as easy to contribute to open source. Want to improve an open source project? With GitHub, you just fork it and send a pull request. If the original owner goes off the grid, no worries, you’ve got your own repo and keep on chugging.
I’ll have to admit at first I didn’t get Twitter. I mean, take a look at the public timeline. Who cares when random folk are bathing? I’ve since learned that there is no better tool for finding those other folks that are just as weird as you. You know, those long lost members of your tribe(s). Folks who are interested in those things you bug everyone else about.
Presently
Soon after I climbed on the Twitter train, I longed for something as easy as Twitter to workstream all those source control checkin notices, build statuses, and “what I am doing” updates. The folks at Intridea have hit a homerun with Present.ly. The groups and hashtag functionality is awesome. Try it for your team!
Software I am thankful for
Redmine
We’ve used a lot of issue trackers. Some great ones. Some workhorses. But we’ve never used anything as extensible as Redmine. Plugins, themes, and custom fields, oh my!
Webby
I want to thank Tim Pease for building such a cool little tool. I’m using Webby to write this post!
Blueprint CSS
Blueprint has been a part of my standard toolbox since it came out. Blueprint brings sanity to my layout and typography while make it so easy developers can do CSS!
This year I’ll be looking to Compass to semantify my Blueprint.
jQuery
I wasn’t in the market for a new JavaScript framework when I discovered jQuery, but I quickly fell in love with this one. jQuery lets me do more powerful things with less code than any other framework I’ve used. With comprehensive CSS3 (and bonus) selectors, chaining, and plugin architecture it’s a joy to use.
How about you?
What are the people, sites, and projects you’re thankful for this year?
