Ask HN: Why is there no real programming community?
28 by thosakwe | 20 comments on Hacker News.
Note: Here, when I say "community," I really mean "online community." To me, the most puzzling thing about programming is that there is no real place to actually discuss programming. As weird/absurd as that sounds, it seems like three major avenues where most discussion occurs are: 1. Reddit. Subreddits are nice and very effectively organize discussion of different topics. On the other hand, Reddit is virtually anonymous, and it's generally frowned upon to share anything of your own creation, in order to not be flagged as spam/self-promotion. 2. Hacker News. It's more than acceptable to submit your own content, or other people's content you found interesting. The downside is that it's very difficult to get to the frontpage, and most posts not on the frontpage are forgotten. There's also the fact that this site is far more anonymous than Reddit, and that features like downvoting are blocked off for most users. 3. Twitter. I like Twitter because it's very personal, and you can actually put faces to names (unheard of elsewhere). The downside here is that for anyone to hear anything you're saying, you truly have to have tens of thousands of followers. I have 4,000, but most of those people are not programmers, and thus there's less than a smidgeon of opportunity for any sort of programming discussion there. So, I've always wondered. Is the reason that there is no real online community, the fact that maybe we just don't need one? Thoughts? Just wanted to discuss...
Note: Here, when I say "community," I really mean "online community." To me, the most puzzling thing about programming is that there is no real place to actually discuss programming. As weird/absurd as that sounds, it seems like three major avenues where most discussion occurs are: 1. Reddit. Subreddits are nice and very effectively organize discussion of different topics. On the other hand, Reddit is virtually anonymous, and it's generally frowned upon to share anything of your own creation, in order to not be flagged as spam/self-promotion. 2. Hacker News. It's more than acceptable to submit your own content, or other people's content you found interesting. The downside is that it's very difficult to get to the frontpage, and most posts not on the frontpage are forgotten. There's also the fact that this site is far more anonymous than Reddit, and that features like downvoting are blocked off for most users. 3. Twitter. I like Twitter because it's very personal, and you can actually put faces to names (unheard of elsewhere). The downside here is that for anyone to hear anything you're saying, you truly have to have tens of thousands of followers. I have 4,000, but most of those people are not programmers, and thus there's less than a smidgeon of opportunity for any sort of programming discussion there. So, I've always wondered. Is the reason that there is no real online community, the fact that maybe we just don't need one? Thoughts? Just wanted to discuss...
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