100 Days of Dev Twitter 🦸‍♂️ Here's what I learned

#webdev #devrel #codenewbie #career

Whoohoo today, I mark an important milestone -- 100 days of Dev Twitter! 🦄

When I first started to engage in this community I had no idea how it’s like. It didn’t take long until I saw what a fantastic community it is! This post is devoted to sharing my experience with the Dev Twitter community. Let me know what you think about it!

Here’s what I learned:

Dev Twitter is so friendly and supportive ❤️

The one thing that popped us extremely fast was how supportive the community is. People are so kind, and it makes it easy to approach them. What I love about it the most is the ability to make new friends. Over the past 100 days, I met extraordinary people and created meaningful conversations around topics that matter.

It’s an excellent environment for people who just start coding to get motivation, inspiration, and useful advice. Most devs, senior and junior, would love to assist if they can. Even though developers like to help one another in general, on Twitter, it’s incredibly beautiful.

While writing this post, I wanted to validate that the things I write are not only my feeling so I made this tweet so seek help in finding good YouTube channels to follow. Guess what? It boomed. Why? Many reasons, but I like to believe that people are supportive :)

What are your favorite YouTube channels for web developers?
— Nimrod Kramer (@NimrodKramer) September 3, 2020

Dev Twitter is unbelievably interlinked 🌈

Once you’re in, it is easy to notice that people know one other, even though they probably never met! Having said that, I can feel that there’s a strong will to make such (virtual meeting). Perhaps it already happened in the past, but anyway, I’d love to see such a thing happen soon :)

There are so many from our community. However, I would love to meet @brunoraljic @dannysteenman @Didicodes @DailyDevTips1 @catalinmpit @skay_tech, Alyssa, @natterstefan @redlotusdesignz @MsAmarachukwu @peterfriese @sabinthedev @TPriyadarshini @antonio_lofiego @IkegahRuth
— Syed Fazle Rahman (@fazlerocks ) September 7, 2020

What I love about is that Twitter, unlike Reddit or discord, is entirely open. There are no borders or fences. You can reach out to everyone and vice versa. This fact makes it unique to see that such an active community was formed in this specific platform.

Dev Twitter appreciates honesty and integrity. 🙌

Simply put, over the past 100 days, I didn’t encounter shady people or anything else that would raise a concern. The most honest people are among the most appreciated. Appreciation isn’t necessarily reflected in the number of followers. It’s about integrity, which eventually leads to engagement.

I could see people with tons of followers, and nearly no one noticed them, while others don’t have large followership, but every tweet they make is a festival of comments, RTs, and likes. Being yourself is the perfect recipe to blend in.

Let me break it for you.

Coding is:
- 1% actually coding
- 40% debugging
- 15% coffee breaks
- 30% googling errors
- 9% staring with your colleagues at the screen
- 5% trying copy/pasted solutions from Stack Overflow
— Catalin Pit (@catalinmpit ) September 5, 2020

Dev Twitter prefers quality over quantity. 🎯

Well, that one isn’t so surprising. It’s a simple lesson that I’m taking with me further. It is better to create one piece of content that provides enormous value than a hundred crap pieces.

The things that work best are tips and advice you would give to yourself. People who write about things that actually helped them are appreciated. Just giving off-the-shelf advice isn’t as useful as things you learned and share with others.

CSS tip 🦄
Use rem instead of px.
This takes into account the user's accessibility settings.
To convert px to rem, divide by 16.
For example:
8px = 0.5rem
— Ido Shamun (@idoshamun ) September 1, 2020

Dev Twitter is addictive. 🎮

I generally care about my productivity and Dev Twitter is one of the biggest distractions I have to date 😅 Anyway, It’s a distraction that I like. I love socializing with awesome people to keep my guilt feelings in an “ok” situation.

Want an example? Good luck resisting this rabbit hole made by the CEO of GitHub:

What's your favorite software to use right now?
— Nat Friedman (@natfriedman) August 22, 2020

That’s it for now. I have many more lessons to share, but I’ll keep them to my Dev Twitter anniversary. 🎉

Top comments (7)

Abhijit Hota • Sep 8 '20

I've heard a lot of hate for Twitter as a social media but have never ever heard anything bad about the developer community in it.

Moreover, I've always thought the Twitter developer community is an awesome one. Your post confirms it!

Maybe I'll join Twitter someday! =)

Geek Lady • Sep 8 '20

I joined Twitter several years ago but seldom used it. After reading your article, I decided to give it a go and just completed my introduction there!