10 brilliant young web developers to watch in 2013
All under 25, these hotshot young web developers are making a name for themselves. Check out the stars of web development's future...
We're constantly amazed by the new talent that's entering the web world at a young age, and these 10 budding young developers are just some of the hotshots currently giving the industry a shot in the arm.
They're all shortlisted for the .net Awards 2013 - the international awards event organised by our sister title, .net magazine. Read on to find out why they were nominated, plus you can find out more and vote for your favourite here.
01. Harry Roberts
A senior UI developer at British broadcasting giant BSkyB and based in Leeds, Harry Roberts first got into development aged 16. Specialising in CSS architecture and frontend performance, he's recently been working on "a pretty huge mobile build" for Sky. Outside of work he's been working on his open source OOCSS framework inuit.css, and also on csswizardry-grids, a Sass-based responsive grid system.
02. Anthony Colangelo
A developer at notable web design agency Happy Cog in Philadelphia, Anthony Colangelo got into development aged 18 and previously worked at Leadnomics. At Happy Cog he's worked for clients including MTV, Delaware Valley College, and Black Hills Corporation, while his biggest personal project outside was jPanelMenu, a jQuery plug-in for creating off-canvas type navigation. He works on both the front and backend of projects using HTML, CSS, JS (and jQuery), PHP, MySQL and NoSQL.
03. Ben Howdle
London-based JavaScript developer Ben Howdle got into development aged 19. He started learning to code in the evenings until he managed to get his first paid client, as he discusses in detail in this blog post. This year Howdle has been building the next generation of KashFlow using BackboneJS and co-hosting Upfront Podcast with Jack Franklin (who's number 6 on our list).
04. Anna Debenham
Freelance frontend developer Anna Debenham has been coding since she was 15. Specialising in HTML and CSS, she recently been busy building prototypes with Leisa Reichelt and working with a startup called Speakr, a web app that helps kids articulate how they feel at school. She's also been working with a team on the University of Surrey website; writes a blog about browsers on game consoles, and co-hosts Unfinished Business, a podcast about the business side of the web.
05. Hans Christian Reinl
Based in Freiburg, Germany, at the age of 15 Hans Christian Reinl began teaching himself to code, and his first job was creating a website for a local rock festival. Mainly focused on front-end code, especially CSS, he shares what he learns on his blog. This year he's been mainly working on client projects, alongside open source contributions to projects such as HTML5 Boilerplate and HTML5 Please.
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06. Jack Franklin
A software engineer at Kainos, London-based Jack Franklin has been coding since the age of 14 and is currently studying Computer Science at the University of Bath. His first paid work was freelancing, doing some basic PSD to HTML/CSS jobs that he found online, but nowadays he works with Ruby and JavaScript, most specifically jQuery, Backbone.js and Node.js. Franklin's also written a book, Beginning jQuery, has a blog, JavaScript Playground, and co-hosts Upfront Podcast with Ben Howdle (who's number 3 on our list).
07. Kit Cambridge
A programmer for enterprise multimedia app Voxer, Kit Cambridge started working as a self-taught developer aged 15. Based in San Francisco, he joined Voxer full-time in September, where he helped to build its user management system. Specialising in JavaScript, Cambridge has continued his involvement outside of work with the BestieJS cooperative, contributing to Lo-Dash (he wrote the first iteration of its custom builder) and JSON 3.
08. Michael Wright
Based in Stafford, England, web development student and freelance web developer Michael Wright got into development aged around 15.
Completely self-taught, he last year worked for a multi-national educational company called EducationCity on both product and internal systems. He tends to specialise in backend work with PHP and MySQL being his strongest points. Lately, alongside his studies he's been writing articles for his tutorial site, Codular, and planning expansions for the social network he created, Striving.
09. Sindre Sorhus
Norwegian consultant Sindre Sorhus has been working in development since the age of 19. Specialising in JavaScript and open source, he's recently become heavily involved in open source projects like Yeoman, TodoMVC, Grunt, Bower, EditorConfig and more, in addition to personal projects like Pure, JsRun, Focus.
10. Josh Emerson
Based in Brighton, UK, Josh Emerson works as a frontend developer at Clearleft having started working in development aged 20. He's recently been working on the new Clearleft site, which uses icon fonts to make sure the website looks great on high DPI devices. He also developed the recently launched Wellcome Library website, a responsive site for a science charity, and developed a technique called Responsive Enhance for dealing with responsive images on this site.
Vote for your favourite today at the .net Awards 2013 website today!
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Do you know an impressive young web developer who deserves a recognition? Give them a shout-out in the comments below!
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