Hey there Hashnoders,
Once you get started with coding, you'll want to connect with other developers who can speed up your progress, or can help you solve some coding problems which naturally arise along the way.
There are a lot of developer communities online where you can meet other devs, discuss hot topics or just exchange news and tips with others. The more problems you solve, your coding skills get better, and the more you help other fellow members of the given dev communities, you'll reinforce your knowledge and improve your soft skills. These are some of the key benefits of being an active member of such online communities.
In order to help all of you who are wondering where they can look for resources and connect with other developers, I've compiled a list of 15 best developer communities you should join. Let's get started 🚀
FreeCodeCamp
freeCodeCamp is a nonprofit organization on a mission to help people to learn how to code. They have created thousands of videos, articles, and interactive coding lessons - all freely available to the public. If you haven't checked their dev community out yet, make sure to do so.
Hackernoon
Hackernoon started off as a publication on Medium, but they moved off of it this year and started their own platform. They are a community mostly focused on blockchain, WebDev, and general business advice. Unlike on Medium, you have to wait for approval before you publish an article on their domain.
Hashnode
Hashnode (the website you are on right now) is one of the fastest-growing networks of software developers with more than 500K+ monthly active developers from 180+ countries worldwide. We are empowering developers to tell their stories and help them grow in their career. We are proud to be the friendliest online developer community out there. You can ask a question (anonymously), write an article and connect with the best developers from around the world. If you haven't checked our unique approach to blogging - Devblog, make sure not to miss out and build your blog with Hashnode in a few easy steps.
Lobsters
Lobsters is a very popular developer-focused online community centered around link aggregation and discussion. Unfortunately, you can only join them if you have an invite link.
StackOverflow
Stack Overflow is one of the biggest Q&A online communities for developers. You've probably already stumbled onto it while googling how to exit Vim, or trying to solve similar problems 😃
If you're just getting started with it, you won't have access to all the features on the platform as they are unlocked gradually. Moreover, don't ask open-ended questions, as they are forbidden.
GitHub
GitHub is not only a place for storing your code, because you can find a lot of useful documentation and projects there, as well as connect with other developers. They are famous for their support for open-source projects and there are only a few OS projects which aren't hosted on it.
DigitalOcean
DigitanOcean focuses on bringing developers closer together on their community platform. They have a lot of useful tutorials for developers, and I'm sure that you'll stumble onto some of them during your career.
HackerNews
HackerNews is one of the oldest communities for developers, people in the computer science world, and entrepreneurship whose UX hasn't changed since the day they launched. You can share the latest trending news with the rest of the community members there.
The Programmer's Hangout on Discord
If you're using Discord, you might want to check out The Programmer's Hangout server. Developers of all levels and languages are welcome to join. This is an extremely active community and a great place to get a solid footing in programming.
#developers on Slack
If you're using Slack, you'll want to check out #developers community. You'll need to fill out the questionary so they can add you there. Developers of all sorts are welcome there and their main focus is to keep all the discussions friendly and welcoming.
Sitepoint Community
Sitepoint is home of thousands of blog posts and discussions related to web development and entrepreneurship. They also use Devblog for posting some of their content 🍻. Make sure to check them out.
Reddit is a community of online communities. We recommend you to check out r/programming, r/webdev, r/python, r/devops, r/linux, r/java, r/javascript, r/reactjs and r/php as the most prominent developer communities.
DZone
DZone contains a lot of articles any software engineer can benefit from. They cover topics such as DevOps, Microservices, IoT, Web Dev, Agile, etc. You can also discover interesting ebooks through their website.
InfoQ
InfoQ contains curated and peer-reviewed content covering innovation in professional software development. They are mainly focused on infrastructure, DevOps, Agile, and enterprise stories.
Toptal
Toptal helps companies to hire top developers for their projects. They also have a lot of blog posts for developers, designers, finance experts, executives, and entrepreneurs. They focus on featuring key technology updates, tutorials, freelancer resources, and management insights.
I hope you find this list of developer communities useful. Please share it with your developer friends who are just getting started. Have a great day!