Salman Shaikh

Posted on Oct 28, 2022 • Edited on Dec 13, 2022 • Originally published at Medium

Where do developers hang out in 2022?

#generaladvice #generalprogramming #communication #community

You can meet all sorts of people in various active developer communities. Communities are the easiest way to connect with other developers, get quick answers to your questions, share your feelings and experience.

For sure, you can meet someone who would help you to understand this weird and crazy world of development, or simply find teammates for your indie game project. And even if you work remotely, you don’t have to stay alone. Let’s keep in touch with other people. But where can you find your fellow developers?

I have brought you some of the most active developer communities in 2022, both general and specific to one particular area of development (or a language).

N0. GitHub and StackOverflow

OMG, is this really the GitHub community in the developer communities list? Yes, it is as it is. And I cannot fail to mention it. GitHub connects 83+ million developers and 200+ million projects. Nuff said.

The developer’s life is an endless cycle of answering and asking questions on StackOverflow. Yes, StackOverflow is one of the largest communities for programmers. So, hurry up, ask your question and don’t worry, someone will surely help you (or tell you that they have the same problem).

N1. Showwcase

Abandon ordinary social networks, embrace social networks for developers. And yes, they actually exist. Showwcase is a social media platform built for developers. Here you can find a community for everyone and everything. Read interesting blogs or write articles on a particular topic. Moreover, Showwcase is an easy way to ask your questions and find other developers to collaborate with.

N2. Hackernews

Hackernews is a social news website for everyone interested in computer science. Keep up the latest industry news and discuss it with like-minded people. The website's mechanics are similar to Reddit, but your posts can't be downvoted. Nevertheless, the moderation is strict, keep that in mind when creating your first post, and read the rules beforehand!

N3. Dev. to

Dev.to is also one of the largest developer online communities (it brings together almost a 1 million of devs). It’s definitely a perfect place to find people from your development area and to discuss your work. Moreover, the Dev .to blog provides a collection of useful articles and posts on a wide range of topics (psst… you can also check out my own post on Dev .to about quizzes for C++ and C# developers 👉👈).

N4. Hashnode

You are here. Hashnode is another big blogging community for developers. In this way, Hashnode is similar to Dev.to, so that’s a one more opportunity to plug into the global dev community. Read interesting articles or give writing a shot to share your experience with other developers and software engineers. By the way, Hashnode is a completely free platform, so you can post and read without any paywalls.

N5. Hackernoon

Hackernoon is a perfect place where you can read (or write) plenty of various tech stories. It’s a global community of 15,000+ writers and over 3,000,000 of monthly readers. Some real person on Twitter said that you can find on Hackernoon "the best hacker and developer publication on the internet". Check it out for yourself.

N6. CodeProject

CodeProject is another big developer community with 15+ million of members. On CodeProject you can find articles on many different topics related to software development, general programming and so on and on. CodeProject employs a rating and comment system that helps to filter good articles, so that you could read the most interesting ones. Code Project also conducts interviews.

N7. Codementor Community

With Codementor Community you can share your developing experience and learn to code together with other developers. Here you can also find software experts in every tech stack, or a freelancer to carry out your project, or a tutor, or a friend. Read and comment articles written by other developers, or write your own.

N8. Major League Hacking

If you’re an average hackathon enjoyer — welcome to Major League Hacking! MLH (more than 65,000 students around the world) conducts online hackathons every weekend. Hackathons are a good way to learn by practice and find some new friends by overcoming a challenge together. So, join the community and challenge yourself.

N9. Indie Hackers

Indie Hackers is a growing online community built to help independent entrepreneurs remain profitable. Here the developers, who are the owners of successful startups (side projects, small businesses, etc.), can share their experience with like-minded professionals. Others can learn from the experiences shared in talks and podcasts. With Indie Hackers you not only keep in touch with other developers online, but you can also look for offline meetups close to your location.

N10. Coderwall

Coderwall is a collaborative learning platform for software developers. Coderwall is a general type community, and it’s actually very similar to the big recipe book written by experienced coders. Here you can get tips that cover almost all areas of web development. You can also share your own programming experience to help others learn new things.

N11. freeCodeCamp

freeCodeCamp is a community where you can learn and practice coding for free and with other people. Here you can find +9,000 free tutorials and dive into lively forum discussions about Python, JavaScript, HTML-CSS and more. At the same time, freeCodeCamp not only supports the English language, there are also forum discussions in Spanish, Italian, Chinese and other languages.

N12. Reddit

It’s no surprise that the most active online community on internet connects not only meme lovers. You can find a lot of dev communities for all tastes on Reddit. Check out some thematic subreddits such as: r/programming, r/dotnet, r/Frontend, r/ProgrammerHumor, r/cpp, r/csharp, r/ProgrammerDadJokes, r/C_Programming, r/webdev, r/CodingHelp, r/css, r/rails, r/AskProgramming and so on. You surely find a community of like-minded people by digging up through the heap of programming subreddits.

N13. Discord

Discord is a one more way to connect with other developers. Share your coding insights on the numerous Discord servers. Here are just a few of them: Devcord, Garbage Collectors, Programming, Programming Discussions, The Programmer’s Hangout, web dev and web design, C++ help, C# Inn, Together Java, Deno (JavaScript), Python, TypeScript Community, Quasar Framework, Hacker101 and so on and on.

N14. Twitter

Many developers have their blogs on Twitter. And they don't only whine about being a developer, but also share their experience and valuable insights. Try digging deeper into Twitter blogs and discover the most interesting accounts (you may check out various compilations of Twitter accounts, such as this one about C# and .NET blogs: The most interesting C# / .NET blogs and websites).

Now let’s discover more specific communities. You can also join a particular community depending on your work, skills and interests.

Game dev communities

N15. GameDev .net

GameDev.net is one of the largest communities (and one of the oldest web resources) for game developers. Here you can take a look at other people’s portfolios, read blogs or take part in forum discussions. You can even go looking for a job in the career section.

N16. Unity Forum

One of the most popular game engines can truly unite people. That’s why Unity Forum is certainly a very lively community of developers, where you can not only find Unity tutorials, but also discuss the latest game developing trends.

N17. Indie Games+

You’re an indie game developer and you need a place to share your gaming masterpiece? Or maybe you’re just looking for an unusual game to play in the evening. Or you’re interested in various indie game projects. Here is a perfect dev community for you – Indie Games+.

Web dev community

N18. Web Developer

Surprisingly, Web Developer is a community for web developers. Here you can find tips, tricks, and tutorials on the wide range of topics (from HTML and CSS to Ruby and SQL) all in one place. The website is easy to use and the lively forum discussions are easy to join. Throw caution to the winds and become an author to share your ideas with other people.

Mobile dev communities

N19. XDA Developers

XDA as a mobile software development community was launched long time ago (in 2002), which makes it one of the oldest programming communities on internet (with more than 5 million of users). That’s a great community news sharing platform and a perfect place for discussions on various topics (forum).

N20. Communities for iOS developers

Since the XDA Developers community is mostly focused on Android and Windows, I’d like to show you some communities for IOS developers. You may have heard something about the main forum for IOS developers (the official Apple Developer website). However, there are numerous other communities on various platforms to your taste, for example: iOS Developers Slack Community, MacRumors forum and Subreddit for IOS developers (r/iOSProgramming).

Summing things up

But are there any offline communities to communicate with other developers face to face, you may ask. That's my point, if you’re looking for any offline activities, try searching for offline events here, on meetup.com, or google for offline programming conferences and hackathons in your area.

Join communities that you’re interested in, feel comfortable, chat with other people, and do not forget that outside of the programming there is a real world with real people who (surprise!) are also into programming, just like you.

So, I hope you found this article curious and maybe decided to join some of the communities mentioned. By the way, check out other links related to the topic:

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