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Ask HN: How to connect with fellow developers given few physical opportunities?
Hello!
I've been studying Computer Science for a few years, but due to changing my major as well as a lot of online classes I haven't been able to meet many fellow developers in my university, especially not those who share my interests within the field. And as far as I know, there aren't many physical community gatherings happening close to where I live.
I would like to change that.
So: those of you who have managed to successfully connect with other developers online, how did you do it?
If anyone would like to chat or learn together, just send me a message here or email me at: erikpl (at) duck (dot) com. These days, my learning is focused on C (related to a compiler course) and video streaming (work-related).
- simonw 5y agoFinding the right Slacks and Discords will definitely help form more intimate relationships, but I've also been gaining a huge amount of value during the pandemic from the software engineering community on Twitter.
- jackson1442 5y agoIt took me a _long_ time to find the "real" software engineering community on twitter. If you just follow the topic, 98% of the "software engineering" tweets are garbage like > 10 reasons why JavaScript is the next BIG language that all developers should learn!!!1! just engagement spam. BUT, once you follow a good dev account you tend to find others.
- karpierz 5y agoCan you recommend some good dev accounts to bootstrap the discovery process?
- eatonphil 5y agoI host a small Discord for devs hacking on cool tech through my company (for an invite go to https://discord.multiprocess.io https://discord.multiprocess.io). Folks here interested in compilers/databases/emulators/big data/ML are welcome to join, introduce yourself and hang out.
- nerdponx 5y agoSorry to be "that guy", but why Discord and not Matrix?
- generalizations 5y agoEasier to use?
- eatonphil 5y agoI wanted to pick the least FOSS-friendly platform around! Just kidding. I don't really know what to say. I think Discord is more mature than Matrix, though it's great as an IRC(-bridge) client. You're welcome to start your own community on Matrix if you'd like!
- yonz 5y agoWhat is Matrix? It's an answer to your question and I am genuinely curious.
- nilsbunger 5y agoGo where your users already are is a pretty basic best practice.
- JonChesterfield 5y agoFwiw discord was totally unwilling to let me in. 'Something is wrong', asked for an email then told me it was already registered, then asked for a date of birth and told me it's unauthorized.
- _williamkennedy 5y agoFor me, I found a server on Discord that I liked. There is one for almost every programming niche at this stage. Introducing yourself on the channel can get you going so to speak and then go slowly from there. Helping people, having fun etc..
- throwaway55421 5y agoStart a physical gathering. There are lots of us that want to meet and aren't obsessed with corona. I hold regular weekly meetups and have done so throughout the last few years, it has been a welcome respite and I have formed some long standing and close relationships. I have found the people I've met to be more community minded and more prone to take the initiative and branch out to new people.
- tr1ll10nb1ll 5y agoHey, I'm Arth. I'm the co-founder of a startup actually solving this called ConnectDome[dot]com. It's like super-charged Lunchclub but for developers with tools that make the whole process of what you described in your post easier. We are releasing a major update pretty soon and since it's developer-only, I might be posting a Show HN for it soon as well, you should try it ig, I could always work on feedback from more developers.
- aww_dang 5y agoPerhaps HN could use WIP "Work In Progress" threads?
- jameshush 5y agoOut of the box suggestion: I moved to Taipei. There’s no COVID here so besides the 2-3 month lockdown last year I’ve been able to go to many in-person meetups like normal. Virtual is _fine_ but for my personality meeting in person is still my preferred way by far. I can’t recommend moving here enough to anyone who needs a place to live a normal life and wait out COVID.
- ghiculescu 5y agoGenuine question, how is there normal life + no COVID there? I’m Australian (but stranded abroad) and thought we’d now run out of countries without it.
- xyzzy21 5y agoIt's Taiwan. Still the lowest COVID rate and from early on. Still one of the last democracies that aren't corrupted.
- ghiculescu 5y agoYeah, my question was why. What is so different about it?
- legerdemain 5y agoThe constant threat of imminent destruction bringing people together?
- jameshush 5y agoTo my understanding SARS hit Taiwan REALLY hard, so they've been extra extra careful about COVID ever since it was discovered.
- 40four 5y agoAlso, spending time in basically any ‘red’ state in the USA can get you the same result. We’ve been living life as usual, almost no restrictions, since at least April of 2021. It’s nice, and believe it or not, the sky is in fact not falling. It’s not as hard as ‘they’ would like you to believe, to be smart & stay safe, while also leading a normal life.
- verdverm 5y agoSlack, discord, and similar chatty places. It's very niche, so joining several is helpful.
- whalesalad 5y agoCan you recommend any specific communities on Slack/Discord?
- nathanaldensr 5y agoFor the .NET ecosystem (and also related topics), there is the excellent and very active C# Discord server. https://discord.gg/csharp https://discord.gg/csharp You can find me on there as NathanAldenSr#2130.
- andrewxdiamond 5y agoThe CodingBlocks podcast has a great slack community! https://www.codingblocks.net/slack/ https://www.codingblocks.net/slack/
- crummy 5y agoIn Aus/NZ, there's View Source and DevANZ (both Slack).
- kroltan 5y agoGameDevNetwork is a pretty chill one for game development. Lots of new people but also some big industry people there. https://gdn.gg/ https://gdn.gg/
- eatonphil 5y agoThe emudev discord is pretty cool too. https://www.reddit.com/r/EmuDev/comments/9mop2q/join_the_official_remudev_chat_on_discord/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EmuDev/comments/9mop2q/join_the_off...
- dr_kiszonka 5y agoHow do you find those communities? Do you simply Google: Slack +"data scientists" or do you use a specific community directory?
- dave84 5y agoI have great fun on small discords, join the community for a software library you use, a game engine, an open source project, a topic, e.g emulator development. The smaller the better usually.
- definataly 5y agoI found lunchclub.com useful for this.
- cwdegidio 5y agoI looked into this... I saw some folks claiming it's flooded with Amway and other MLM pushers. Have you experienced this?
- definataly 5y agoI mostly talked to data-scientists in Europe and made interesting connections. I usually check people's LinkedIn, twitter, etc before agreeing to meet. So no, I haven't seen any MLM, but maybe I'm more strict in my filtering than others.
- physicsgraph 5y agoThanks for the recommendation. It looks like an interesting way to meet random technical people.
- Shadonototra 5y agojoin IRC servers, Discord servers, contribute to open source, be active in suggestion discussions internet is a richer world than IRL, flawed with social codes, unfair physical comparisons, wealth gap issues etc on the internet, you are just another random user, it's beautiful the only time it's ugly, is when people censor you because you speak the truth and it goes against their agenda.. but this is the same stuff IRL, the advantage of the internet is you can create a new life, it's a matter of a click embrace the internet, contribute, and eradicate the censors by pissing them off
- omarhaneef 5y agoOnline meetups. One video chat with voice = 200 smart comments on IRC (that was the old slack) Go to meetup and sign up for whatever topics you are interested in. Almost all the meetings are going to be on zoom these days.
- legerdemain 5y agoOnline meetups (IME) are traaaash. Old-style meetups, most people would attend with a colleague or to meet up with someone specific, not randos who wandered in. New-style COVID meetups, you just have a pre-recorded talk or someone struggling with screen-sharing for 20 minutes, and then you have 20 anonymous windows on Zoom with only 2-3 people doing the thing where they're nominally asking a question, but actually telling some kind of tiresome and dubious anecdote.
- chana_masala 5y agoHow did you get a Duck Duck Go email address?
- taterbase 5y agohttps://spreadprivacy.com/introducing-email-protection-beta/ https://spreadprivacy.com/introducing-email-protection-beta/
- fileoffset 5y agoAll this seems to do is remove some external tracking and replace it with DDGs own? They state they never save your emails, but they don't have to save them to extract metadata or scan for content they are interested in. We need a self hosted version of this service IMHO...
- ultra_nick 5y agoI like attending Gather.town events. However, usually chatrooms are better for discovering stuff.
- lesbianbezos 5y agoI use Founders Cafe for this. Everyday, I co-work with founders from Stanford/Harvard/YC in person (in PALO ALTO!) and also virtually too (everyday they have cowork seshs) so fucking worth
- lesbianbezos 5y agohttps://founderscafe.io https://founderscafe.io
- eatonphil 5y agoLooks nice! Might be worth clarifying in your bio or comment that you founded it too.
- Ostrogodsky 5y ago
- legerdemain 5y agoOr also that this is a paid service that's priced at several hundred dollars (billed annually! if you're cool enough to be "selected"!).
- strikelaserclaw 5y agoyou should have assumed that when they started name dropping.
- eatonphil 5y agoI don't think there's anything wrong in general with charging people for something you provide. I support that part. I just think it's good to be clear about your relationship with the thing you're advertising.
- legerdemain 5y ago
- _bramses 5y agoDiscord is a good bet
- heavyset_go 5y agoGet involved in open source projects with communities. You'll build rapport and connections will naturally spring from them.
- devwastaken 5y agoVideo games, and not the common ones. Ive met some engineers with far too much time and money. Most of the time it's in more MMO kind of games. Other times it's Vrchat, because the programming and game dev side attracts all sorts. A lot of big names meetup in VR, but hard to get into those circles really. I've found furry world's to somehow be the underground secret engineer meetup place. I met an Intel engi a few weeks ago.
- legerdemain 5y agoHackerNews! It's the highest-quality, broadest, and most far-ranging community of developers, engineers, technologists, and rational sympathizers!
- jraph 5y agoA bit involved, but regularly contributing to an open source project that you like might work.