My React List
Update (2017): When I first wrote this more than two years ago, the React community was still fairly small. I have created a new list that reflects some of the current active community members as of 2017 here:
https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/937339649537781762
https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/937346123458588672
https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/937350410561519617
https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/937352046268899328That’s quite a bit more people, but I hope you find it useful too!
When I just started playing with React and got into open source, I didn’t know the community at all. I didn’t know who these people are, where to find them, what they care about, and how to get in touch.
It took me some time to realize that the tech community, aside from Github, is mostly on Twitter. It’s obvious to you if you’re part of it, but it wasn’t obvious to me back then. That’s why I decided to compile a list of people I think you should follow if you’re starting to use React.
If you’re a beginner, this list should help you get a feel of the React community vibe, tools and libraries and their authors, and future directions.
I didn’t make it a Twitter list so you don’t end up with a bunch of randos in your feed, and so I could add some comments. If you turn this into a Twitter list, let me know! (Update: William Leong created a Twitter list based on this article!)
Disclaimer
- This is obviously very subjective.
- It’s not “React people” list. It’s “people I think React beginner should follow”. Some of them don’t even use React.
- Please don’t be mad if I forgot you. ;-)
So, I Think You Should Follow…
Sebastian Markbåge
@sebmarkbage
Sebastian is the long-term vision guy and the source for most “future of React” teasers. He’s on TC39 so he gets to decide the future of JavaScript. He is calm like Yoda. A must-follow.
David Nolen
@swannodette
David realized React is a platform before anyone else. His article on the future of MVC frameworks was a turning point which got many people to take React seriously. David writes in ClojureScript.
Cheng Lou
@_chenglou
Cheng is a prolific author of long-ass gists. He is also a core contributor figuring out the next animation API. Unlike David, Cheng doesn’t hate JavaScript, so he steals good ideas from ClojureScript.
Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
Told you this wasn’t exactly a React list! Andy worked on UIKit for a long time. A wise, “fundamentals” type of guy.
Christopher Chedeau
@vjeux
Chris is a core contributor currently working on React Native. He is more cheerful and relaxed than the folks above. Tweet at him if you built something cool with React!
Jordan Walke
@jordwalke
Jordan wrote the first prototypes of React and has been a core contributor ever since. He is now working on React Native. OCaml aficionado.
Lee Byron
@leeb
Famous for ImmutableJS, Lee worked on a variety of React projects inside Facebook, including the soon-to-be-released Relay and GraphQL. You’ll recognize him by the bow-tie.
Paul O’Shannessy
@zpao
Paul maintains React. Nuff said.
Pete Hunt
@floydophone
Pete is famous for being a very active core contributor as well as the public face of React for quite some time. Ex-Instagram and Facebook, now doing his own thing.
Amjad Masad
@amasad
Amjad works on infrastructure and tooling at Facebook. And it looks like exciting things are going to open up soon.
James Long
@jlongster
James loves to learn new stuff and then educate people about it. He’s a very thoughtful blogger. Removing UI Complexity is yet another epic post that drove adoption of React.
Sebastian McKenzie
@sebmck
Sebastian created Babel, a future-today JavaScript transpiler. He’s a living example of exceptionally great open source project stewardship. Don’t confuse him with Sebastian Markbåge!
Jing Chen
@jingc
Jing is solving the data fetching, first with Flux and now with Relay.
Bill Fisher
@fisherwebdev
Bill knows everything about Flux. Like Jing, he works at Facebook.
Ryan Florence and Michael Jackson
@ryanflorence and @mjackson
Ryan and Michael are famous for being awesome teachers, great presenters and creating React Router, probably the most popular React library ever. These guys often appear together so you should just follow both.
Mark Dalgleish
@markdalgleish
Mark’s State of Change presentation included this gem: “Is Object.observe what we want rather than what we need?” These days Mark experiments a lot with progressive JavaScript applications that are rendered server-first.
Ralph Thomas
@i_am_ralpht
Ralph’s feed is a goldmine of insights about animations, interactive UI and physics. You should see (and interact with) his Constraints demo if you haven’t already.
Ben Alpert
@soprano
Ben is the most active React contributor outside of Facebook. This is why he is not outside anymore.
Kyle Mathews
@kylemathews
Kyle created many small React components, as well as more ambitious projects such as Typography.js. You’ll want to keep track of his work.
Bonnie Eisenman
@brindelle
Bonnie writes about using React at Codecademy.
Justin Spahr-Summers and Josh Abernathy
@jspahrsummers and @joshaber
Justin and Josh are core contributors to ReactiveCocoa and related projects. They love functional, declarative, reactive. Mostly using Swift.
Kevin Doughty
@KvnDy
Kevin advocated additive animations for a few years before they came in vogue. You should totally read his blog for more thoughts on animation.
Matthew Podwysocki
@mattpodwysocki
Matt is the person behind RxJS. He knows everything about Observables. He wears a robe and a wizard hat.
Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale
@wycats and @tomdale
Yehuda and Tom are Ember core team members. I’d say Yehuda is to Ember as Markbåge is to React. Yehuda is also on TC39. His and Tom’s current project is to bring faster-than-React rendering to Ember. It’s always fun to watch Tom troll React people, don’t get offended!
Tara Jane Feener
@tfeener
Tara is a designery engineer at FiftyThree.
Andrew Clark
@acdlite
Andrew created Flummox, an elegant Flux framework inspired by Alt.
Spike Brehm
@spikebrehm
Spike is an Airbnb engineer working on Airpal, a React query monitor app they recently open sourced.
Josh Perez
@goatslacker
Josh created Alt, a Flux framework. Also working at Airbnb.
Brian Ford
@briantford
Brian is from the Angular core team. You want to know what’s going on there!
Vyacheslav Egorov
@mraleph
Vyacheslav is a compiler engineer and it’s good to have him in the Twitter feed so you don’t forget how deep the rabbit hole goes. I love his pictures and interactive demos.
Nathan Wienert
@natebirdman
Nathan created Reapp, an open source React hybrid app toolkit.
Tom Occhino
@tomocchino
Tom is a developer-gone-manager at Facebook. I’m not sure what he does exactly but he seems in charge of React-related projects. He’ll hunt you down.
Joseph Savona, Dan Schafer and Nick Schrock
@en_JS, @dlschafer and @schrockn
Joseph, Dan and Nick are Facebook engineers working on Relay and GraphQL. Follow them or you’ll miss its release!
Aria Buckles
@ariabuckles
Aria built many React components at Khan Academy as she worked on Perseus and will talk about best practices and challenges at ReactEurope.
Kevin Robinson
@krob
Kevin is a Twitter engineer. He’s going to give a talk at ReactEurope about simplifying the data layer by collecting immutable facts.
Matt DesLauriers
@mattdesl
Matt writes tips about using WebGL libraries with live reloading tools, glslify, and Browserify.
Jafar Husain
@jhusain
Jafar is an engineer at Netflix and yet another member of TC39. He is currently working on proposals for ES7 such as compositional functions and push generators. He also teaches async JS patterns at Egghead and Frontend Masters. Keep track of his work!
Torgeir Thoresen and Mikael Brevik
@torgeir and @mikaelbrevik
Torgeir and Mikael built Omniscient and Immstruct, JavaScript libraries inspired by David Nolen’s Om. If you want to understand Om better without learning ClojureScript, following them is a great first step!
Sander Spies
@Sander_Spies
Sander created React Style, a React Native-like way to write component stylesheets. React Style also had valuable contributions from Andrey Popp.
André Staltz
@andrestaltz
André created Cycle, an “honestly reactive framework”. It uses Observables for everything, from data to virtual DOM. Make sure to read his blog post that led to creation of Cycle.
Rick Wong
@Rygu
Rick created react-transmit and react-isomorphic-starterkit.
Christian Alfoni
@christianalfoni
One of Christian’s projects brings Flux to Angular. He is also working on a forms library called formsy-react.
Matt Esch
@matthewesch
Unsatisfied with React being monolithic from the outside, Matt created virtual-dom to provide “just virtual DOM” implementation for other view libraries.
Jake Verbaten
@Raynos
Jake built Mercury, a library similar to React but composed out of small independent packages.
Jonny Buchanan
@jbscript
Jonny created newforms, an isomorphic form handling library for React, as well as other smaller components.
Elie Rotenberg
@elierotenberg
Elie works on systems with millions of users and applies principles of Flux in a distributed fashion. Make sure to read his Flux over the Wire.
François de Campredon
@Fdecampredon
François created rx-flux and rx-react and tries to bridge and combine Rx with React in different ways.
Jeff Winkler
@winkler1
Jeff posts interesting snippets, links, and tips related to React and Flux.
Jed Watson
@JedWatson
Jed is building Touchstone, a mobile app framework powered by React.
If You’re Not Listed
I know some great people aren’t on the list, and I’m sorry if you didn’t make it!
I tried to stick to folks who either actively tweet a lot of original content or take active part in discussions about the libraries they contributed to. If I left out somebody who matches these criteria (you?), please leave me a note (I’ll keep it private), and I’ll add them!
Oh, and if you found this list useful, you can follow me on Twitter too.
