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The Web Development GOAT

In addition to pirates and Pixar movies, I’m a huge fan of hip-hop.

Hip-hop is at it’s core a very competitive genre, and a never-ending topic of debate within the community is: who’s the GOAT, the Greatest of All Time. Every hip-hop fan has a top 5 list.

So, who’s the GOAT of web development? Here’s my top 5 list.

  1. John Resig, inventor of jQuery. Yes, my whole site is about how to not use jQuery. But without jQuery, none of these great, modern JS APIs that I love would even exist. John dragged browser makers forward with his incredible project.
  2. Eric Meyer is an institution. He helped drive web standards that make working across browsers infinitely easier. He gave us the CSS reset. He cofounded An Event Apart. He gives so much to our community.
  3. Nicole Sullivan is the originator of OOCSS, but she never gets credit for it. OOCSS led to BEM, and has changed the way I and so many people architect CSS.
  4. Chris Coyier, who teaches everyone how to code. CSS Tricks literally taught me web development and helped me change careers. Code Pen gives people an easy way to experiment and play with web technology.
  5. Ethan Marcotte, who coined the term Responsive Web Design and completely changed how we build for the web.

If I were to do a top 10 list, Sara Soueidan, Brad Frost, and Lea Verou.

(I’m painfully aware that there’s only one woman in my top 5, and that’s one me to fix.)

So, who’s in your top 5?