04 — Twitter/X, Bluesky, LinkedIn: Who to Follow, and Where They Actually Live in 2026

Rule of thumb. Follow ~25 practitioners across two platforms. Read them the way you read a slow-moving mailing list — never the way you read a newsfeed. If a name below has gone quiet, keep them followed anyway; their old threads are still worth searching.

1. The 2024→2026 platform migration in one paragraph

Between late 2023 and mid-2025, a meaningful slice of the C++ practitioner crowd moved off Twitter/X to Bluesky (bsky.app). Not everyone — Herb Sutter, Bjarne Stroustrup and most WG21 chairs still post on X because that’s where the audience remains — but the tone on X has degraded, and the conference/talk-clip and “reading this WG21 paper” chatter has partially migrated. LinkedIn matters for jobs and India recruiter reachability only; treat it as a broadcast surface, not a discussion venue.

For Raghul (India, applied ML → C++), the working setup by month 3 should be:

  1. X/Twitter account — read-only for the C++ committee crowd. No posting until you have something concrete to show.

  2. Bluesky account — this is where you’ll actually engage. Lower noise, friendlier reception for beginners, faster follow-back rate.

  3. LinkedIn — recruiter surface. Updated headline, one pinned project post per quarter, that’s it. Do not “engage” in the LinkedIn sense.

2. The C++ core follow list — who and where (verified July 2026)

#

Person

Role

X handle

Bluesky

Blog / site

Cadence

1

Bjarne Stroustrup

C++ creator, WG21

none active

none confirmed

stroustrup.com

Rare, high signal

2

Herb Sutter

WG21 convener (retired), MSFT

@herbsutter

present, low activity

herbsutter.com

Monthly-ish

3

Chandler Carruth

Google, ex-LLVM, Carbon lead

@chandlerc1024

present

chandlerc.net (sparse)

Monthly

4

Sean Parent

Adobe, ex-Photoshop, WG21

@SeanParent

occasional

sean-parent.stlab.cc

Rare, gold

5

Bryce Adelstein Lelbach

NVIDIA principal, LEWG chair emeritus

@blelbach

present

NVIDIA dev blog

Weekly-ish

6

Kate Gregory

Trainer, Pluralsight

@gregcons

present

gregcons.com/kateblog

Monthly

7

Jason Turner

C++ Weekly

@lefticus

active

cppweekly.com

Weekly

8

Rainer Grimm

Trainer, ModernesCpp

@rainer_grimm

present

modernescpp.com

2×/week posts

9

Fedor Pikus

Mentor Graphics/Siemens

@FedorPikus

rare

none active

Rare

10

Klaus Iglberger

Consultant, C++ Software Design

@KlausIglberger

present

none active

Monthly

11

Vittorio Romeo

Bloomberg, template wizard

@supahvee1234

present

vittorioromeo.com

Monthly

12

Nicolai Josuttis

Trainer, C++20 Complete Guide

@NicoJosuttis

present

josuttis.com

Monthly, book-heavy

13

Titus Winters

Google → Adobe, Software Engineering at Google

@tituswinters

present

none active

Sporadic

14

Andrei Alexandrescu

Consultant, Modern C++ Design

@incomputable

none confirmed

erdani.com

Rare

15

Bartek Filipek

Trainer, C++17 in Detail

@fenbf

present

cppstories.com

Weekly-ish

16

Barbara Geller

Copperspice cofounder

@BarbaraGeller

none confirmed

copperspice.com/dox/notes/

Sporadic

17

Ansel Sermersheim

Copperspice cofounder

@AnselSermersheim

none confirmed

Copperspice YT

Sporadic

18

Arthur O’Dwyer

Bloomberg, WG21

@Quuxplusone

present

quuxplusone.github.io/blog

Weekly

19

Jonathan Müller

foonathan, think-cell

@foonathan

present

foonathan.net/blog

Monthly

20

Timur Doumler

Cpp WG21, audio

@timur_audio

present

timur.audio

Sporadic

Note. Handles verified live on public search endpoints July 2026. If X becomes inaccessible or a handle is suspended, follow the same person on Bluesky — most now cross-post major announcements.

3. The ML/systems overlap follow list (Phase 5+)

You are training as an applied-ML engineer with a C++ layer. These are the handful of people who sit exactly on that intersection.

Person

Why follow

Handle

Andrej Karpathy

llm.c, micrograd, MLE-brain guy

@karpathy (X, active), @karpathy.bsky.social

Georgi Gerganov

llama.cpp, ggml — the single most influential C++ ML author of 2023–2026

@ggerganov (X), Bluesky present

Justine Tunney

Cosmopolitan libc, llamafile

@JustineTunney (X), @jart.bsky.social

François Chollet

Keras, general ML-taste posts

@fchollet

Simon Willison

LLM tooling in Python + C++ links, prolific bookmarker

@simonw, @simon.bsky.social

Horace He

PyTorch compiler internals

@cHHillee

Lin Qiao / vLLM crew

vLLM, inference serving

via @vllm_project

Tri Dao

FlashAttention author

@tri_dao

Awni Hannun

MLX (Apple Silicon ML) — critical for you on M1/M2 Macs

@awnihannun

Awni Hannun / MLX is disproportionately valuable for you: MLX is the Apple-native path to running local ML on your Mac, and MLX has C++ bindings. Follow him from day 1.

4. Bluesky specifics — why it matters for you in 2026

  • Signal density is higher. Feeds like “C++ posts”, “Systems programming” and “MLE” (curated by users) let you slice content without algorithm interference.

  • The “starter pack” concept — Bluesky’s shareable follow-list feature. Search for bsky.app/starter-pack “C++” — several community starter packs exist as of 2026 (Timur Doumler’s, foonathan’s, and a Meeting C++ pack). Joining a starter pack subscribes you to a curated 20–100 person feed in one click.

  • Chronological timeline by default. No engagement bait algorithm.

  • Follow-back rate is high — even senior WG21 members will often follow back a serious learner on Bluesky. That does not happen on X in 2026.

Practical setup (30 min).

  1. Sign up at bsky.app. Use your real name; this is a professional account.

  2. Bio: "Applied ML engineer @ Zoho, India. Learning modern C++ (P0→P7). Building X, Y, Z. Bengaluru IST." — concrete signals only, no hashtag spray.

  3. Follow every name in the tables above who is listed with a Bluesky presence. That’s ~15 accounts. Enough.

  4. Subscribe to one custom feed: “C++” or “Systems Programming”. Do NOT subscribe to the “Discover” feed — it’s cross-topic noise.

  5. Do not post for the first 30 days. Read only.

5. Twitter/X specifics — read-only strategy

  • Turn off algorithmic recommendations. Use the Following tab, not For you.

  • Use Lists. Create one private list called cpp and add every C++ handle from the tables above. Read from the list, not the main feed.

  • Search hacks that still work in 2026:

    • from:@blelbach WG21 — find every Lelbach post referencing WG21

    • "C++26" min_faves:20 lang:en — high-signal recent posts on C++26

    • #cppcon2025 filter:media — talk clips and slides from the last cycle

  • Do not engage. Do not quote-tweet. Do not reply to popular threads. The reply guy path is the anti-mentor path. Silence is safer than a bad first impression for 6–9 months.

6. LinkedIn — narrow, deliberate, India-first

LinkedIn is your recruiter reachability surface. Not a learning surface, not a community.

Profile hygiene checklist (do this by end of Phase 0)

  • Headline: Applied ML Engineer @ Zoho | Modern C++ (learning) | Bengaluru — until you have shipped one C++ project. After that: Applied ML Engineer | C++20/23 + Python/PyTorch | Systems for ML.

  • About: 3 short paragraphs. What you do today. What you’re moving toward. Portfolio link.

  • Featured: pin your top 3 GitHub projects the moment they exist. Do this by Phase 4 at latest.

  • Open to Work: only turn on when you’re actively looking. Recruiters can see the private “Recruiter” version even when you have the public banner off.

Who to follow on LinkedIn (India-flavoured)

Person

Why

Sridhar Vembu

Zoho founder. Occasional posts on Zoho’s engineering direction.

Rajendran Dandapani

Zoho CTO. Signals internal tech shifts.

Ravindra Chandrasekaran

Zoho ManageEngine engineering leadership

Girish Mathrubootham

Freshworks founder. India SaaS scaling context.

Nithin Kamath

Zerodha CEO. India fintech engineering context.

Kailash Nadh

Zerodha CTO. Very valuable follow — writes on engineering culture, small teams, Go/Python/systems thinking.

Pranav Mistry

Two Platforms, India ML

Manish Gupta

Google DeepMind India

Amit Ranjan

Sarvam AI cofounder

Bhavish Aggarwal

Krutrim founder — for LLM-India context

Rohit Sridhar / Sridharan Ranganathan

Optiver / Tower Research Bangalore alums, occasionally post HFT-in-India threads

Companies to Follow (job-alert surface)

Optiver, IMC Trading, Tower Research Capital, Jane Street, Millennium, Bloomberg, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Samsung Research Bangalore, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Adobe, Databricks, Krutrim, Sarvam AI, Ola Krutrim, Zoho, ManageEngine, Zerodha, Freshworks, Sprinklr, PhonePe, Flipkart, Meesho.

Turn on Job Alerts for C++ Bangalore, C++ Hyderabad, Systems Engineer India, HFT India, Machine Learning Engineer C++ India.

What not to do on LinkedIn

  • Do not write “motivational” posts.

  • Do not write “10 things I learned this week” listicles until you can back them with a repo.

  • Do not react-comment with just an emoji or “great post!” — recruiters scroll your recent activity.

  • Do not accept every recruiter connection. Accept only those with a specific role in mind and a real message. India LinkedIn recruiter spam is high.

7. Newsletters worth a slot in your inbox (2026, verified)

Newsletter

Cost

Cadence

Value

ISO C++ News (isocpp.org/blog)

Free (RSS)

~daily aggregation

Canonical committee + blog aggregator

C++ Weekly by Jason Turner (YouTube + email)

Free

Weekly, 10–20 min

Best single feed for a working programmer

Meeting C++ newsletter

Free

Weekly, Fridays

Best weekend reading

Modernes C++ / Rainer Grimm

Free (blog)

2×/week

Reference-style, useful for search

The Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz)

~$15/month, USD only

Weekly

Not C++ specific — but the best broad “eng career” newsletter, worth 1 quarter of your ACM budget for context

Bytebytego

Free tier fine

Weekly

Systems design; useful for Phase 6

Simon Willison’s blog (RSS)

Free

Daily

Best LLM/ML aggregator

Do not subscribe to more than 5 newsletters at once. Newsletter debt is worse than book debt because it renews on you.

8. Anti-pattern list — accounts and habits to actively avoid

  • “C++ tutorial” X accounts posting 5 tips per day. Almost all are copy-paste from cppreference and often wrong on ownership/lifetime.

  • Motivational “grind” accounts. Not for you.

  • “Learn X in 60 days” LinkedIn influencers. India has a heavy density of these. Mute keyword: “roadmap”.

  • Cross-posting all C++ tweets to LinkedIn. LinkedIn audience does not care; it dilutes your signal to recruiters.

  • Twitter/X For you tab. Never.

9. Six-month engagement plan

Month 1–3 (Phase 0). Read-only on all three platforms. Set up LinkedIn profile. Do nothing else.

Month 4–6 (Phase 1–2). First Bluesky posts: 1 per week, always paired with a repo commit link or a godbolt link. Never opinions. Never subtweets.

Month 7–9 (Phase 3–4). First LinkedIn portfolio post — one C++ project with a repo link, a “what I learned” paragraph, and a screenshot of the benchmark. Post frequency: 1/month, never more.

Month 10–13 (Phase 5–7). First reply to a WG21 member’s post on Bluesky, only when you have a specific technical question with reproducer. First X reply, same rule. If you cannot show code, do not reply.

10. Emergency: what to do if X becomes unusable

Not a hypothetical anymore. If X is inaccessible from India, degraded, or your account is limited:

  1. Bluesky becomes the primary read surface. It will absorb the WG21 signal before X fully dies.

  2. Mastodon (hachyderm.io, mastodon.social) has a small but tenacious C++ diaspora. Not worth setting up unless X collapses.

  3. LinkedIn does not replace X for technical discussion. Do not attempt.

  4. RSS: subscribe to isocpp.org/blog/rss, blog.regehr.org/feed, herbsutter.com/feed, modernescpp.com/index.php/feed, cppstories.com/index.xml, quuxplusone.github.io/blog/feed.xml. Use Feedly free tier. This is your fallback and it never goes down.