A big part of my frustration as a programmer is that I don't have a lot of friends that are on a similar level that are willing to let me bounce ideas off of them. The last few years I've been flying blind with no external frame of reference except for the few really beginner dev friends that I have.

Where do you people socialize? IRC has long been... well, kinda dead compared to how it was 15 years ago or before. I have ideas that I'd love to discuss with others in the same sphere of interests but simply cannot find them.

Frustrating.

What about colleagues?

That’s always been the best place for me to talk about detailed code stuff.

Other than that I’ve never felt like ant online community has been good for talking in depth about coding in general.

Outside of the office I’ve learned a lot from conferances, video classes and podcasts.
But talking shop at the office with senior deva has been the best by far.

@jiraTicket I'm usually the only senior dev, and I don't work for a company right now.

@junon - oh, then I highly recommend joining a different project/company. I know that’s not what you were askin for.. but still gotta mention it as an option.

I've always learned more from colleagues at work than outside of work. That day-to-day learning really builds up over time.

Sure - it might take a few tries to find a place where your colleagues can teach you things, when you're a senior dev, but you'd be surprised how quickly thing can change. I used to work for a place where I thought I was the best dev, switched to a different company and had 4-5 colleagues who were way beyond my skill level and taught me so many things on a weekly basis.

I'm kind of in the same boat, but sometimes I find some Discord servers to be useful for this (e.g. the Developers Hangout), other than that people I work with on OSS projects.

Github project -> Zulip chat -> Discord friends.