# Cool People In no particular order :P ## [Élie Michel](https://twitter.com/exppad) I discovered him through the [Learn WebGPU for C++](https://eliemichel.github.io/LearnWebGPU/) tutorial. I was stunned by the quality of the tutorial and the effort that must have been put in - everything that should have been annoying (setting up emscripten, choosing between webgpu-native and dawn, getting a glfw surface, building dawn in the first place, etc) was made simple through what must have been a ton of effort on his side. I seriously don't think I've seen another tutorial this good. So I checked out his [github](https://github.com/eliemichel) and saw that he's also a contributor to wgpu. Wow! He's also a researcher at Adobe Graphics and I think he teaches graphics programming too. If you look at his portfolio, you'll see [he's a genuine artist](https://portfolio.exppad.com/). Not to mention, he maintains a very cool tool for importing google maps data into blender. Where does he find the time? ## [Raph Levien](https://levien.com/). A true jack of all trades. Where to begin? He created [Inconsolata](https://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html), one of my favorite fonts, and campaigned against crypto export legislation: > Levien played a small part in precipitating the relaxation of the US [crypto export legislation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography#PC_era "Export of cryptography"), by filing for a [Commodities Jurisdiction Request](https://web.archive.org/web/20050316074605/http://www.petting-zoo.net/~deadbeef/archive/340.html) for a [T-shirt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shirt "T-shirt") containing an implementation of the [RSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(algorithm) "RSA (algorithm)") encryption algorithm, in four lines of [Perl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl "Perl"). At the time (1995), the code on the T-shirt would have been regarded as a [munition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munition "Munition") by the [United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States "United States") and other [NATO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO "NATO") governments. And of course, he's working on [Vello](https://github.com/linebender/vello), which is only the baddest 2d graphics renderer in existence, implemented in Rust and using wgpu. To write it, he invented [the stack monoid](https://raphlinus.github.io/gpu/2021/05/13/stack-monoid-revisited.html). Just next level stuff. ## [Victor Taelin](https://twitter.com/VictorTaelin) lt's nearly possible to google anything about interaction combinators or Lamping's algorithm without running into his [stackoverflow questions](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31223539/is-it-possible-to-evaluate-lambda-calculus-terms-efficiently) or [blog posts](https://medium.com/@maiavictor). He has taken his years-long obsession with this topic and turned it into a [pretty cool runtime](https://github.com/Kindelia/HVM), which is intended to be the backing for a [pretty cool-looking programming language](https://github.com/Kindelia/Kind). Such dedication to a single idea is something you rarely see. ## [Inigo Quilez](https://iquilezles.org/) An absolute legend in the world of shaders and raymarching. I'm especially obsessed with his [many articles](https://iquilezles.org/articles/) on all topics raymarching. Each one has a way of reminding me [how much more I have to learn](https://iquilezles.org/articles/mset2bulb/): > It's very usual to people to know that for the classic Mandelbrot set the period two hyperbolic component ${H_2}^2$ is a disc of radius $1/4$ centered at $-1$. This result can be obtained easily by hand. However, is it possible to find a general method to obtain descriptions of Mandelbrot sets with $k$ other than $2$? ## [Henrik Karlsson](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/) I know Henrik would be one of my favorite writers as soon as I read his first post, [Networks of Trust vs Markets](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/networks-of-trust-vs-markets). Since then, he's consistently put out amazing posts, and it's always a joy when he lights up my inbox. ## [Philosophy Bear](https://philosophybear.substack.com/) A long time ago, I read his "[Something to read in Quarantine](https://deponysum.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/something-to-read-in-quarantine-essays-2018-to-2020-v2.pdf)" essay collection. They were gripping and changed my perspective on many things.