The Best Developer Communities to Join in 2020
If you want to grow and succeed as a developer in today‘s fast-paced tech world, one of the best investments you can make is to surround yourself with like-minded people by joining a developer community. Whether you‘re just learning to code or are a seasoned engineer, being part of an active community provides invaluable opportunities to learn new skills, get support and mentorship, collaborate on projects, and advance your career.
In this article, we‘ll explore the vibrant landscape of developer communities in 2020 and highlight some of the best ones to consider joining. From global Q&A sites to local meetups, there are communities to match every developer‘s needs and interests.
Why Join a Developer Community?
Being part of a developer community comes with a host of benefits for your growth:
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Accelerated learning: Tap into the shared knowledge of thousands of developers to quickly get answers, feedback, and new insights. Learn from others‘ experiences and mistakes.
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Motivation and accountability: It‘s easy to get discouraged or fall off track learning on your own. A supportive community rallies you on and keeps you energized to reach your goals.
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Network and opportunities: Make friends with people who share your passion. Your connections may help you land your dream job, find a co-founder, or beta testers for your app.
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Collaboration: Find teammates to build projects with and level up your skills. Contributing to open source exposes you to new codebases and development practices.
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Mentorship: More experienced members are often willing to take newbies under their wing. Their guidance can boost your progress and open doors.
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Fun! Engage in lively discussions, attend social events, celebrate victories, and build camaraderie with your peers. Coding is more fun together.
Convinced? Let‘s explore some of the top developer communities to check out.
Global Q&A Communities
Every developer gets stuck sometimes. These mega Q&A sites are often the first stop to find help from experts around the world.
Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is the mecca for developers, boasting over 120 million monthly visitors and a staggering repository of 21 million questions and answers. With its upvoting system and gamified reputation points, you can be assured the best answers rise to the top. Beyond troubleshooting issues, Stack Overflow is a goldmine for learning how to tackle all kinds of development challenges.
GitHub Community Forum
While GitHub is best known as the place to host and collaborate on code, it also has a robust community forum for Q&A on a range of programming topics as well as discussions on industry news and trends. You can also showcase your projects, find open source to contribute to, and grow your network.
Blogging Communities
Developers love to write and share knowledge. These sites are hubs for great technical content and discussion.
DEV Community
DEV is a fast-growing community for programmers to share ideas and help each other out. It provides a welcoming space to have thoughtful conversations and find high-quality articles submitted by the community. You can cross-post your own articles, build a following, and get constructive feedback to become a better technical writer.
Hashnode
Hashnode is a blogging platform that empowers developers to share stories and questions on everything from JavaScript tutorials to career advice. It aims to foster thoughtful discussions that go deeper than just sharing links. You can easily start your own blog (for free) to build your personal brand and authority.
Social News Sites
These addictive sites are the watercoolers of the developer community to catch up on the latest tools, practices, and buzz in the industry.
Hacker News
Hacker News (HN) is the go-to site for developers and technologists to get a pulse on what‘s happening in the tech world. With its minimalist design, it can look intimidating at first. But spend some time reading the top stories and insightful comments and you‘ll be hooked by the sheer signal in the noise. You may even have your own "I made it to the front page of HN!" moment.
Reddit has thriving sub-communities (subreddits) for pretty much every programming language and domain. /r/programming and /r/webdev are great jumping off points to explore and participate in discussions, whether it‘s analyzing a technical blog post or cracking jokes in the comments. There‘s a reason it‘s nicknamed the "front page of the internet."
Interactive Learning Communities
Learning by doing is one of the best ways to solidify new knowledge. These communities combine hands-on coding practice with social support.
freeCodeCamp
freeCodeCamp is a powerhouse platform that has helped millions of people learn to code for free. It offers an abundance of interactive coding lessons, projects, and certifications to take you from zero to job-ready. But it‘s also a massive global community that feels like a family. You can join a local study group to code alongside others, discuss your learning journey in the forum, and read thousands of articles to deepen your knowledge.
Codecademy Forums
Codecademy is another major player in the online code learning space. While it‘s mostly focused on its curriculum, it does provide student forums to connect with other learners, get help with exercises, and share motivation. If you‘re enrolled in a course, the forums can be a valuable supplement to enhance your learning.
Specialty Communities
Within the broader field of software development, there are also plenty of niche communities catering to specific domains, languages, and career stages.
Women Who Code
Women remain underrepresented in tech. Women Who Code is a global non-profit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers. With 200,000 members in 60 cities, it provides a supportive community for women to connect, learn, and advance their skills through technical study groups, career development events, and conferences. If you‘re a woman in tech, WWCode is an empowering ally.
Indie Hackers
Have dreams of building a profitable side project or startup? Indie Hackers is the place to learn from and hang out with other ambitious developers turned entrepreneurs. With interviews from successful founders, AMAs, and a forum for swapping lessons learned, you‘ll find the inspiration and advice to start earning revenue from your own code.
In-Person Meetups
While online communities are great, there‘s nothing quite like connecting face-to-face with developers in your local area.
Meetup.com
Meetup is the ultimate directory to find tech events happening near you. From regular language-specific user groups to annual conferences, you can join a variety of gatherings to mingle with other tech folks over pizza and code. Meetups are often organized by local community leaders passionate about bringing people together.
Google Developer Groups
Google Developer Groups (GDGs) are Google-sponsored communities open to everybody interested in Google‘s developer technologies. GDGs host local meetups on a range of technical topics and are a great place to learn skills like Android development, machine learning with TensorFlow, or Google Cloud Platform.
Company-Sponsored Communities
Many tech companies cultivate developer communities around their products and services to drive adoption, get user feedback, and provide customer support.
Microsoft Developer Community
Microsoft‘s developer ecosystem is vast, covering everything from .NET and C# to Azure cloud computing. The Microsoft Developer Community serves as a central hub for documentation, discussion, and support for developers building on Microsoft tools and technologies. You can get coding help, submit feature requests, and stay on top of the latest updates.
Amazon Developer Forums
Amazon has a large suite of developer products, from AWS to Alexa skills. Their developer forums provide spaces to ask questions, share projects, and provide feedback to Amazon‘s teams. If you‘re building Alexa skills, for example, you can get help with the Alexa Skills Kit and get advice to refine your voice apps.
Tips to Get the Most Out of Developer Communities
Joining developer communities is a great first step, but to really reap the benefits, you‘ll want to be an active, engaged participant. Here are some tips to get the most out of your membership:
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Introduce yourself: Don‘t be shy! Write a brief intro post sharing who you are, your background and goals, and what you hope to gain from the community. Making yourself known opens doors to people reaching out to help.
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Ask questions: Communities exist to support each other. If you‘re stuck on a tricky bug or can‘t decide which JavaScript framework to learn, ask away! Be sure to include relevant details and what you‘ve already tried. Showing you put in effort goes a long way.
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Contribute your knowledge: You don‘t have to be an expert to help others. Share tips from your experience, explain concepts you recently learned, or share projects you‘re working on. Teaching others is one of the best ways to reinforce your own understanding.
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Attend events: If a community you join hosts events, whether virtual or in-person, make an effort to attend. This is a chance to learn new things, network with others, and put faces to names. You might even give a talk or lead a workshop yourself!
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Give back: Communities thrive when everybody pitches in. As you gain more experience, pay it forward by answering questions, contributing to open source, or mentoring others. Your positive contributions will be appreciated and reciprocated.
Find YOUR Communities!
We‘ve covered a lot of different communities in this article, but there are countless others out there. You don‘t have to join them all, nor should you! Explore a handful that pique your interest, but focus your engagement on the ones that resonate most with your goals and personality.
Everyone‘s needs are different. Some devs thrive on deep discussions in niche Slack groups, while others prefer the organized structure of freeCodeCamp‘s curriculum. The most important thing is to find a few communities where you feel comfortable being yourself and inspired to grow.
No matter which developer communities you choose, the key is to bring enthusiasm, curiosity, and a spirit of giving. Put in consistent effort to learn and contribute, and you‘ll be amazed at how far you can go with the support of a vibrant community behind you. Here‘s to your coding journey in 2020 and beyond!