Ask HN: How can I meet other programmers?

[piratelogic]

I've recently moved to Jacksonville, FL and I'd like to meet some fellow developers. The city I lived in before moving to Jacksonville had virtually no tech community so this isn't an opportunity I've been exposed to.

Here in Jacksonville there are a few programming meetups (the biggest being RubyJax, organized by Hashrocket), but my experience has all been in Python and there isn't much of a Python community as far as I can tell.

I have a real desire to become a better programmer but, without anyone to talk shop with, it's a lonely venture. Where can I look to meet fellow coders?

[bmelton]

I was going to suggest a Jacksonville HN Meetup, but I looked on Meetup.com, and you appear to be right -- there's very little in your area. The nearest thing I saw was the Gainesville Web Meetup, but it only had 4 people attending and that's a hike for you.

You could always start a Jacksonville HN meetup, if only to find out how many others are in the area. Or you could start a poll on here and tweet the link to try to get it upvoted -- post the link back here if you do and I'll upvote it.

Another suggestion I was going to give you is to hit up a StartupWeekend - here's[1] one in Jacksonville, but I don't know how frequent they are in your area.

http://jacksonville.startupweekend.org/

[Wilduck]

Before I found a python user group in Minneapolis, I had only heard about the Ruby user group. So, I installed ruby, made sure I could run

  >> puts "Hello world"

and then went to the Ruby meetup. It was a good call. At the time I really just needed someone to talk shop with and no one there cared that I was mainly a Python dev. It's not like we talked about block scoping and multi-lined lambdas.

One huge benefit of going to the Ruby meetup was that I learned of a bunch of other meetups in the area. Smaller ones that didn't have a web presence yet. There may be a Python community in Jacksonville that some Ruby users might know about.

[devs1010]

Go on LinkedIn and try to add some other developers who seem like they would be the type of person who goes to meetups. I did this before and got some suggestions for places to go (a co-working type of environment) that I hadn't heard of before. It ended up being pretty far from where I actually lived so I never made it out there (busy with work, commute, etc) but it was nice to at least have the option

[hkarthik]

I'd go to RubyJax and meet up with the Ruby programmers. You'll have a lot more in common with them than you will with Enterprise .NET or Java programmers. And who knows, you might find that you like Ruby too.

[steventruong]

Start your own Python meetup group if there isn't one. I've started a couple different meetup groups over the years and sure it starts off slow but gradually it'll grow and people will find you.

[PedroCandeias]

Go to rubyjax. Chances are you'll meet people who also code python. Even if you don't, it'll probably be an interesting event anyway.

[rman666]

Um, start a Meetup and Tweet about it? It'll cost $50.

[piratelogic → rman666]

I'm trying to get a job so I can buy a new hard drive for my laptop. It crashed. $50 isn't in the budget right now, but I do admit this is an idea I hadn't thought about.

I will definitely look into this in the future!

[rmATinnovafy → piratelogic]

How about just tweeting about it?

Pick a known local place and tweet it.