The benefits of developer communities cannot be over-emphasized in the growth of developers from peer-programming to sharing knowledge, mentorship, sharing support, sharing tools, code reviews, answering questions, and much more.
Communities are usually built on shared struggles of individuals learning in a particular region, and the goals of each community differ per the individual's collective needs.
Over the years, these developer communities have grown across the world with different goals and missions but still with the general aim of providing a platform for developers to learn, interact, share ideas, support each other and grow.
"If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." – African Proverb
To better help those looking out for communities to join, I have put together a list of 20 best communities in no particular order ranging from Engineering, Design, Data Science, Machine Learning, Developer Relations, Technical Writing, and more.
If you know any more communities you have found helpful, please share them in the comments section for the benefit of all :).
Women Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that provides a global community for women in tech with events, coding resources, jobs, mentorship, and more. They aim to inspire, support, and help women develop technical skills and excel in their careers.
Join now to get exclusive access to their community, events, scholarships, free event tickets, job boards, and more.
Hashnode is an online community where developers share knowledge and grow their careers. Developers from around the world participate in consequential discussions on Hashnode. You can write stories, ask open-ended questions as well as technical questions, ask questions anonymously, and start polls. You can also ask popular tech teams and developer influencers questions or learn from stories of awesome women in tech.
Hashnode's Devblog platform enables you to create your personal blog on your custom domain in a few simple steps with everything you need to grow as a blogger. (No Paywall, Free domain, SSL, Automatic backup of posts, Markdown, AMP Support, and more). Own your canonical, make your contents independent, and build your domain authority.
freeCodeCamp is a nonprofit organization that helps people learn to code for free through thousands of videos, articles, interactive coding lessons and thousands of freeCodeCamp study groups around the world.
You learn by completing coding challenges and building projects alongside verified certifications.
Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for programmers with tons of questions and answers on a wide range of topics in computer programming.
You can learn from already asked and answered questions, share your programming knowledge by answering asked questions or share your issues/bugs here.
Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship, where you can submit a link to technical content.
This is a great place to promote your contents to a wide range of viewers and find amazing contents from other technical geeks.
Hackernoon is a tech media site that delivers stories and opinions written by real tech professionals and read by Technologists, Software Developers, Bitcoiners, Blockchain Enthusiasts.
You can write technical articles here and learn from a wide range of available unfettered technical contents.
SitePoint community is a community for web designers and developers to discuss everything web development from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Photoshop, SEO, and more.
Similar to StackOverflow, you can ask and answer all web development questions here.
Kaggle is an online community of data scientists and machine learning practitioners with a vast repository of community published data and code with over 19,000 public datasets and 200,000 open notebooks. Kaggle also offers courses on Machine Learning, Pandas, Python, Deep Learning, Data Visualization, SQL alongside competitions, and discussions to help you grow.
An Indie hacker is "a person building an online project that can generate revenue." Indie Hackers is a global community of developers who are sharing their projects, strategies, and revenue statistics behind their companies and side projects.
You get to learn from the founders behind hundreds of successful online businesses and connect with others who are starting and growing their own companies through their global meetups, discussions, articles, and more.
Code Newbie is the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. It started as a weekly Twitter chat made to provide much-needed support to people learning to code. It has since grown into a supportive, international community of people learning to code.
This is an inclusive place where developers can find or lend support and contribute to the community of DevOps and cloud computing enthusiasts. The community provides comprehensive guides, tutorials, trends for developers, Q/A sessions, and much more.
Product Hunt is an exciting community of featured amazing products launched every day. It's a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and find out about the latest mobile applications, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.
Reddit is global community of thousands sub communities, endless conversations, and authentic networking with tons of never-ending streams for developers like r/reactjs, r/vuejs, r/JAMstack_dev, r/Python and more.
DevCareer is a nonprofit organization that is focused on supporting upcoming developers with mentorship and resources to enable them to become world-class developers. They provide laptops, co-working space, resources, mentorship, and job placements for software developers in Africa who pass through the program.
The Interaction Design Foundation Community provides an exciting opportunity for designers to create and hone their portfolio while getting ready for a new User Experience job. They offer courses from UX experts, local UX Design Meet-ups in cities across the world, UX discussions, collaboration, and much more.
Daily UI is a free series of daily UI design challenges, design inspiration, and surprise rewards to make you become a better designer in 100 days. Their amazing daily reminders will motivate you to keep learning.
DEV is a community of software developers helping one another out. DEV provides a place for developers to collaborate and network while learning and sharing their knowledge.
DevRel Collective is a community of developer relations enthusiasts that exists to facilitate sharing information, resources, and encouragement among the DevRel community.
If you are actively involved in developer communities, advocacy, or event management, you should join this community.
Developer Circles from Facebook is a program designed to create locally organized communities for developers. These communities educate and provide a forum for discussion and knowledge sharing around topics that are top-of-mind for developers in a particular market.
Find a local Developer Circle nearest to you here.
GDG brings software developers with similar interests together to meet through meetups and hands-on workshops. The community welcomes everyone and anyone interested in tech from beginners to experienced professionals.``
Find a GDG chapter nearest to you here
Conclusion
"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." – Margaret J. Wheatley
The bond in developer communities has grown from just "technical groups" to "family groups" where everyone is passionate about sharing knowledge, giving back, and helping everyone reach higher heights.
Isn't this just amazing? Cheers to the new age where sharing knowledge and togetherness become the order of the day. 🙏💙
