Before trying any new technology, the first thing I do is try and find it's IRC room. If you don't know what IRC is, consider it a chat room for weird computer programmers. My first day trying node.js was also my first day in #node.js on irc.freenode.net. I was greeted by several friendly node enthusiasts and got lots of help getting my first node code working. Coincidentally, also on my first day, November 23, 2009, Debuggable starting running logs for #node.js.

In this article, I will dive into the #node.js log files, find out who the most active users are, and then follow their online handles to reveal who they are.

Disclaimer: These stats should not be used for anything important. All data-sources and tools used to make this are available here. Jump to the end of the article to learn how to crunch the numbers yourself.

Top 25 Most Active Users

Here is a raw dump of the most active users in #node.js by line count

	Nick	Number of lines
1	JimBastard	18011
2	isaacs	17160
3	creationix	15018
4	Micheil	12119
5	mape	9359
6	ryah	9051
7	mikeal	8884
8	ry	7798
9	mscdex	6752
10	inimino	6146
11	felixge	5540
12	mjr	5202
13	sechrist	4923
14	tmpvar	4865
15	announcer	4759
16	tjholowaychuk	4737
17	elliottcable	4710
18	maushu	4493
19	Tim_Smart	4332
20	JimBastard	3479
21	polotek	3459
22	hassox	2455
23	cloudhead	2402
24	technoweenie	2394
25	ashb	2331

sexy colors courtesy of pisg
# Notable Top 25 Most Active Users Part of what makes node.js great is it's community. The most active people in the #node.js IRC room are some of the most talented and prolific contributors to the project. I've taken the liberty to match up some of the most active online IRC handles to their real-life equivalents. The results are pretty amazing.

Nick	Lines	Github
JimBastard	18011	http://github.com/marak</a></td>
Err...Marak Squires takes the #1 spot...that's me! I should talk less.
isaacs	17160	http://github.com/isaacs</a></td>
Isaac Z. Schlueter. Author of npm, Joyent Employee, Awesome Dude. Helped me on my first day in #node.js
creationix	15018	http://github.com/creationix</a></td>
Tim Caswell. Author of Connect, owner of howtonode.org, prolific node.js developer.
Micheil	12119	http://github.com/miksago</a></td>
Micheil Smith. Changelog contributor and module developer hailing from Australia. Super friendly and helpful.
mape	9359	http://github.com/mape</a></td>
Mathias Pettersson, the unstoppable Swede. Winner of NodeKnockout ( several times over ). Author of several node.js modules.
ryah	9051	http://github.com/ry</a></td>
Ryan Dahl. God-father of node. Joyent employee. Created node.js and double rainbows.
mikeal	8884	http://github.com/mikeal</a></td>
Mikeal Rodgers. CouchOne employee. Apache developer. Old-school JavaScript Guru.
ry	7798	http://github.com/ry</a></td>
Alternate handle for ryah
mscdex	6752	http://github.com/mscdex</a></td>
Brian White. Mysterious man. Builds really slick node.js libraries such as ncurses and asterix.
inimino	6146	http://inimino.org/~inimino/blog/</a></td>
Expert JavaScript developer, wishes to remain anonymous.
felixge	5540	http://github.com/felixge</a></td>
Felix Geisendorfer. Owner of Debuggable. Author of several node.js modules. Maintains the #node.js logs
mjr	5202	https://github.com/mranney</a></td>
Matt Raney. Very tall, author of noderedis.
tmpvar	4865	http://github.com/tmpvar</a></td>
Elijah Insua. Nodejitsu contributor. Author of JSDOM and several other node.js modules.
tjholowaychuk	4737	https://github.com/visionmedia</a></td>
TJ Holowaychuk. Author of ExpressJS and Connect. LearnBoost employee.
JimBastard	3479	http://github.com/marak</a></td>
Alternate account for JimBastard.
cloudhead	2402	https://github.com/cloudhead</a></td>
Alexis Sellier - Prolific node.js contributor. Author of VowsJS and Cradle.
technoweenie	2394	http://github.com/technoweenie</a></td>
Rick Olson - Github Employee. Legendary Ruby on Rails developer. Possible super hero.

Very Honorable Mentions

There are a few irc room users who came very close to making the top 25 most active and definitely should be mentioned. Their contributions to node.js have been amazing and they didn't have to talk a lot about it. :-)

Nick	Line Count	Github
mde	1729	http://github.com/mde</a></td>
Matthew Eernisse. Yammer employee. Author of geddy.
kriszyp	1571	http://github.com/kriszyp</a></td>
Kris Zyp. Uber JavaScript developer. Author of Persevere.
sh1mmer	1481	http://github.com/sh1mmer</a></td>
Tom Hughes-Croucher. Community leader, author of several node.js modules.
pgriess	1397	http://github.com/pgriess</a></td>
Peter Griess. Facebook employee. Coder of hard-core node.js C stuff.
SubStack & pkrumins	1395 & 1379	http://github.com/substack</a><br/><a href="http://github.com/pkrumins">http://github.com/pkrumins</a></td>
James Halliday & Peteris Krumins.The StackVM guys. They release a lot of software, a lot.
jashkenas	1299	http://github.com/jashkenas</a></td>
Jeremy Ashkenas, JavaScript Zen Master. All lists must contain at least one instance of jashkenas. Author of CoffeeScript, Backbone, and underscore to name a few.

Crunching the numbers

For those who are interested where these numbers came from...

Getting the logs

To pull a copy of the #node.js logs from from debuggable, you can try this quick script I wrote here. There are also copies of the log files in this repo.

Cleaning the logs

I couldn't figure out what logging format was being used, so I wrote a quick script to convert the custom logging format into standard mIRC format ( which pisg can understand ). The clean log files are included in the node-stats repo

Running PISG

Use Perl IRC Statistics Generator. pisg is available for download here: http://pisg.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=download</a> Once you have pisg downloaded, you simply run the pisg command and specify the log file or path you want to use.