Ask HN: Where do all the web devs talk?
28 points by LinguaBrowse 5 hours ago
28 points by LinguaBrowse 5 hours ago
I've been using Twitter / X for a good decade now, and while I've found it's a great place to connect with native app dev communities (I'm well connected with the React Native scene), I really struggle to connect with any web devs.
There are a few big names like Adam Wathan who are pretty active on Twitter of course, but considering how widespread web dev is, I see precious few up-and-coming web devs coding in public.
So, where are they? I have explored BlueSky a bit, but again it feels a bit like tumbleweeds (though maybe that's just my luck as a small account).
Are web devs more old-school, posting on bulletin boards and forums? Or is X still the answer, and I'm just getting aggressively packed into a different bubble?
… Or is it all realtime communication, like Slack and Discord, these days?
I browse my LinkedIn feed (yeah, I know) and I often see discussions pop up between people from my network, albeit nowadays it's mostly about AI tools. I see discussions pop up on /r/webdev on reddit, but not a super active subreddit. on 4chan there used to be /wdg/ (maybe there still is, but i haven't been to that website in years at this point) I bet a lot of discussions happen on Slack servers for specific frameworks, but I don't have a lot of experience with using those except asking questions in the #questions channels Twitter, still. Despite several attempts to move off, the center of gravity is still there. Everywhere... I have seen good devs on Reddit, Discord, Mastodon and even IRC. I'm only a casual dev but I see a lot of chat on Reddit, or Lemmy, the fediverse alternative. There's tech folk also using Matrix. There is a very large presence over at Mastodon when it comes to people well versed in web standards. The public discussions are often very lively (in a good way). Can you link to some lists or an example discussion to seed my list to follow? Mastodon seems stalled out but I think it’s just a discoverability issue. I think that X was the big web dev community, and as soon as it was taken over by rocket man, people scattered to the wind. I think most, however, didn't actually go anywhere and just decided to be less social. I've found that layoffs and RTO have multiplied the toxicity of development communities. People will openly threaten to call your HR department if you say something wrong. Developers and engineers aren't trying to get better, they're just harming each other in a loop until the most evil one survives. It's cut-throat but not even in a good way, just extremely anti-social and aggressive. I don't recommend any development communities. If you want to try Discord, many people who will try to get you fired are available to chat with. I talk with long time friends who are developers but it's mainly really sad conversations. > Are web devs more old-school, posting on bulletin boards and forums? Or is X still the answer, and I'm just getting aggressively packed into a different bubble? > … Or is it all realtime communication, like Slack and Discord, these days? Yes to all. Friends + threads like these! Try searching Twitter using key terms on xcancel (or another proxy) in order to find more relevant accounts to follow, and seed your algorithm with. Unless you originally started using the account for niche tech purposes, your niche interests can remain a minor part of your bubble for sure. [flagged] I think it's quite telling then, that a large amount of links posted on HN are sadly still to xitter And what discord and slack channels would you recommend? Twitter is not really substantive, that is true, bit it is quite valuable in learning about something existing in the first place. For example yesterday I learned that "niri" DE exists from a random comment to a tweet, and it is quite an amazing tool! [flagged] unreasonably judgmental rant against your solution Vague/useless contribution of an alternative here's a penny, bot It's OK to criticize without offering solutions There was nothing constructive about his criticism of the platform related to web dev in any way. I know a lot about his politics now though. There’s no criticism there. Calling people racists and bots is not criticism, it’s just name calling. There is nothing critical about it. It was an observation, and a criticism. It was massively reported that Shitter has a huge problem with bots, and was very publicly known when company valuations were happening. And, since the handover to Musk, there has been a documented shift to extreme-right-wing content on the site. I'm not going to beat around the bush. You know as well as I do that X has become the de-facto social media network for extreme-right demographics and the overall quality of content has objectively diminished as a result. This!, its amazing how some people want to drag you into their world and have a huge discussion when all you want to do is point out some part of their idea your dont like. Yep It's some kind of logical fallacy where they try to discredit what you're saying by asserting that you must have some kind of solution in order to justify identifying a problem. It feels as if they try to 'prove' that they are smarter than you are, because you clearly don't have solutions where they clearly do. It's a weak form of deflection. I don’t understand the purpose of this comment given the context. People with plenty of real purpose and substance do post to Twitter (e.g. Andrej Karpathy).
asimovDev - an hour ago
rozenmd - an hour ago
raaron773 - an hour ago
Bedlow - 2 hours ago
MrDresden - an hour ago
kortilla - 29 minutes ago
phendrenad2 - an hour ago
kittikitti - 2 hours ago
DANmode - an hour ago
King-Aaron - 3 hours ago
politelemon - 2 hours ago
tommica - 2 hours ago
King-Aaron - 2 hours ago
colecut - an hour ago
tkel - an hour ago
colecut - 35 minutes ago
kortilla - 32 minutes ago
King-Aaron - 8 minutes ago
globalnode - an hour ago
King-Aaron - an hour ago
kortilla - 35 minutes ago