Hello everyone,
I have been looking for a way to contribute to the tech community for a while. I have tried mentoring and open-source contribution but that hasn't really worked out for me.
But I know that one thing i enjoy doing is helping people when they are stuck or have a problem. I have decided to focus on that instead trying to do other things I am not really good at.
Does anyone know any community or platform where they mainly focus on debugging or unblocking other developers. I am mainly looking for somewhere for beginners or junior developers as I am still young in tech.
I am a full-stack developer with experience in React and Ruby on Rails.
I look forward to your suggestions.
Top comments (10)
I've been thinking a lot about how a 'platform' like this would work recently - I'm the same way where I really like helping debug a one-off issue/unblock.
I'll be subscribing to this thread to see any answers that pop up! 😄
If you like the idea of helping beginners and junior developers I recommend joining freeCodeCamp's forum. FreeCodeCamp is aimed at teaching people how to code for free. Its forum is a big part of that, as it provides a place to ask questions, get help, and support.
FreeCodeCamp is community supported, open source, and a non-profit, so there are no paywalls or ads. It also has a community similar to dev.to, however its aimed more toward those starting out due to the nature of the platform.
Check it out :D
Disclosure: I've been part of freeCodeCamp for a few years, and love the community environment and atmosphere :D
Probably stack overflow? Or do you mean you want a platform for mercenary delopers to join enterprises as contractors. I think your question could be clearer and youl get better answers 😅
I am not looking to work as a contractor or do it for payment. I don't want to be a mentor. Just a one-off unblocking session when you are stuck
then Stack Overflow is what you need. Of course they will block you from posting answers if you do it without trying to solve it by yourself.
You'll need to search on google, digest the information you got, try and fail and then ask if you still don't know what you need to solve your issue.
This works this way because this is the way you learn instead on asking dumb things and make others lose time instead on searching it by yourself.
You can join some discord servers too, there are tones of them, for example Svelte has its own, so if you work using ruby seek for a server of it.
Of course no one will be pending to schedule a call with you (or anyone) to solve issues for free, it's said that people need money to live too 😆 One thing is to help each other in the community and another thing so different is to provide a service that could need full time dedication, to plan and document and lately teach you as a prime service for free.
Ohh just join the dev mentor program. I'm not sure how but somebody might.
a way to contribute to the tech community
What does this mean to you? Why is this important to you?
I have tried mentoring
How did that go? What were you teaching? You say you are new to tech, so - were you teaching about some other area?
open-source contribution
What did you contribute to? How were you able to contribute as a beginner? Did you use the tags for first-time contributors and new people? firsttimersonly.com/ docs.github.com/en/github/building...
neither really worked for me
What didn't work out?
a community or platform where they mainly focus on debugging or unblocking other developers
Why is your focus to help other developers instead of just being your own developer? Is this a way to work on slightly easier parts of the problem? Why would someone who already knows their project well - want you (who does not) - to jump in and help them?
What does this "platform" look like? Is it a StackOverflow with bounties in existing codebases? What does that mean to you?
I am a full-stack developer with experience in React and Ruby on Rails.
Have you contributed to React or Rails? The Rails homepage is written like it's 2005. But they don't really like that type of contribution from what we've heard. codepen.io/sheriffderek/pen/XwmBad... ~ there's some low-hanging-fruit.
Doesn't React pride itself on having 10s of thousands of addon type things? There seems to be plenty to fix there.
What about MDN - or any of the other open-source documentation systems? Or stuff like this? codecorps.org/
We'd like to know more about your thoughts on this.
We hear "I'm looking for a way to contribute to the tech community" I want to help people A LOT - and we're totally confused. How are you? Are you doing ok? Are you totally financially secure and fulfilled - and now you have more time on your hands? Do you feel like this community really gave a lot to you - and now you want to give back? The "tech community" is mostly exploiting the open-source work of the developer community. The "tech" community is rich. Why do you want to help them? How would you feel if you could help them? Please explain: we are ultra-genuinely interested in this subject.
yeah stackoverflow is the closest thing. Also a lot of the problems that coders face are either behind a corporate wall, copyright and so on so you won't ever have access to the full picture beyond the snippet that the dev is comfortable sharing.
There are many coding help communities dev.to included.
GENERAL:
stackoverflow.com and related sub domain.
SPECIFIC:
Join mailing list / discussion forums.
Try answering some questions on stackoverflow.