My experience being a developer with no developer community

Do your best to try and apply the things you've learned to your current job, and devote only some of your free time to stay up-to-date with things. Use the rest of your free time on some hobbies. This approach should boost your confidence in your abilities a bit. When the time comes that you feel especially inspired, use this to get into something like a hobby project or explore a new language.

Over time, dedication to learning will pay off, but you will also need to cross this barrier and say, "Hello, I'm Damon, and I'm actually pretty damn good at this thing.". A lot of advice on the internet says the best way to strike a good job is to be networked in the valley... as if everyone can just do that. So I feel your pain there, but it's still possible to break out if you keep your focus and don't let the circumstances get the better of you. You need to believe in yourself and build your self-esteem step by step.

So, work on bettering yourself (this includes self-esteem, health), instead of trying to get into "a circle".

So.. I began learning about farming to see if there was an intersection between coding and farming. A Ted talk on that topic inspired me. Now I am trying to bring ag based technology projects here in order to stimulate interest in coding by conservative blue collar ag and worker types

Maybe my story will plant an idea within you!

I think our similarities may end there. After teaching myself to program, and building some apps that got some good recognition, I decided to get more serious about this programming thing and move to a place which had a developer community. I moved to Sydney, Australia (after considering San Fran, I decided Bondi was a better combination of lifestyle and work for me).

Is it expensive here? Hell ya! But you have an advantage I didn't, you can interview, before you move! You can make contacts in Melbourne or Sydney, and don't forget Brisbane has a decent community too with much lower cost of living.

It may sound rough, but I think you need to HTFU (as Chopper would say).

Or, decide why you want to be in a place with a developer community? What do you look to gain from that?

If you're making less as a developer than you could at a grocery store (and you have an employer, you're not just trying to sell your own apps) than somebody is taking advantage of you, or you haven't done the math on what you're worth.

The only thing stopping you from 'break[ing] through the window and join[ing] in' is yourself.

Stop making excuses, and if you want to do it, just do it. If you don't I'd hazard to guess you'll regret it in the long run.

When it comes to many open-source projects, you've got people from all over the world participating, so time-zone isn't an issue. And most of us have strong personalities, yet low self-esteem and suffer from the impostor syndrome. That's the curse of being a human being. Some communities are more toxic than others. In some communities you've got jerks allowed to do whatever they want, like conducting personal attacks on other people. But most communities I interacted with are very friendly and civilized, most of them have a Code of Conduct as well. So if you had a bad experience, just remember that there are other communities out there far more welcoming.

As for steps of getting started, pick a project you could see yourself contributing to, find the communication channels (mailing lists, IRC, Gitter, Slack) and start asking questions and answering the questions of beginners, which is a painless way to start getting involved and meeting people. Sooner or later you'll find yourself submitting PRs on Github and saving money to participate at conferences only to meet your peers face to face.

The HN community has nothing to do with physical location, you get to it by typing its URL into your browser, and you engage with it by posting thoughtful comments.

Actually, that's not quite true. Conventions and meet-ups are great for networking, and the SCALE conference is how I found my first job back in 2008. But as a weekly thing? Meh.

In my current job, I'm much more on the "Ops" side of things, when I'd rather be in Dev, so I'm not getting my fix at work. I've had a series of hobby projects. I talk about them to friends, and that's always been enough for me. Everyone's different, though.

Maybe Australia's different, but if you got a job offer at a decent employer in the US, you could probably get some money for relocation costs, and even sometimes a hiring bonus that would tide you over in a new environment until you really got your footing. It sounds like where you are has limited opportunities for growth, anyhow. You're likely to need to leave at some point, if you'd like to remain a developer. It's something to think about, anyhow (although you know your situation better, and I'm sure you've thought through all the paths countless times).

I can relate with your story. In the last two years I've been learning development while working in a business type role. Nobody at lunch gives a crap about webpack or Node.js, nor do my housemates, and while on dates I've concluded it's best not to bring up what items I've recently starred on Github.

So each day passes with a dozen unspoken conversations. That's absolutely fine, I've nobody to bounce my love of modern classical music off either.

That doesn't make me love those interests less. This right here is a community I'm part off, so is the 'Tech peeps I like' twitter list I follow, so are the comments below the newest codrops article, and the discussions on Github pull requests I made, and the developers I support on patreon.

Truth be told, having been to meetups, there's a good chance you're not missing a whole lot. "Hey isn't [topic of meetup] great?" "Yeah I really like [latest update]" "Me too" [beer consumed] "Great, bye".

I'm being flippant. The point is I think you're ignoring the community staring you in the face and while I understand your perspective you should realise that these barriers are mostly self-imposed. Anxiety, self-esteem issues and imposter syndrome won't disappear just because you're in the city or because a meetup is closer than a 1 hour train journey away.

So rather than assuming doors are closed before even trying to open them, why not apply for a job in the city, create a pull request and travel to that meetup in Melbourne, no matter how 'taxing'?

Being on my own for so long forced me to be the sort of generalist that some people think doesn't exist or even shouldn't exist. I mean like morally, they act like some of my projects are an affront to humanity just because I like to keep my number of dependencies low. It makes it hard to interact with people who care more about what frameworks (yes, plural) you used than what problem you're solving.

PS. Geelong is actually pretty beautiful. Try and buy your house if you can before the rest of Australia finds out.

News nor community not the hacker maketh. It's the other way round. Imagine saying "I want to cook but after reading the recipe books and finding no one to cook with, I end up not cooking"? Wut? No way man, I'm hungry so I make myself dinner

And so it is with other creative work.

An hour commute isn't that long. I spent 4 hours a day on commuting for a few years before moving to my current city. It is definitely something you can live with for a short time.

See if you can make LCAU 2017 in Hobart, or more locally http://www.meetup.com/Geelong-Lean-Coffee/ looks promising.

And the same thing applies online. You might find the Linux kernel mailing list fairly bristly, but what about the mailing list for the database query library that you use? Those smaller ponds are much more likely to appreciate a well written bug report or pull request. Is there something you don't like about one of the tools you use? Fix it. Or try to fix it and then ask for help.

And if you get burnt, move on. It's like dating, you can't guarantee that it's going to work out every time. If it goes bad it doesn't need to be a reflection on you or even on the community. It just means keep looking.

Let's get a community going! :-)

(I am on the wrong side of this, living in the most expensive country in the world — Switzerland — without much tech scene).

It's SOOOOOO much easier nowadays. Everything's at your fingertips. There are literally hundreds of communities a URL away. There are more tutorials than you can shake a stick at. You don't even need to special order books from obscure sellers and wait weeks for it to be in stock anymore! Hell, you can even video conference with people, doing hackathons over google hangouts!

In fact, that's the main reason why I've moved TO a small town. I work from remote, and live on a farm.

I don't mean to say "kids these days", but seriously...

Who has time for that?

A few observations from my career so far (20 years in):

* Going for a Master's degree in CS can seriously improve your job prospects, and should make you a genuinely more awesome developer. (I'm not saying it's a necessary or sufficient requirement for awesomeness, but it's usually very beneficial.) Continuing on to a PhD in CS? Not so much :)

* Getting a Master's degree at a good CS university is an awesome path towards very cool jobs. The way I've seen that work is that those departments have CS professors who often look to commercialize their ideas (at least that's what I've seen with database research), and they try to recruit their more promising Master's / PhD students, especially if they were already working on the academic version of the project.

* I work remotely doing mainly C++ development, but I've found remote, well-paying C++ jobs are somewhat rare. But if you can build up some interest and skills in web development, it shouldn't be difficult to find a fully remote job that pays way, way more than a supermarket job would.

* This one is slightly depressing, but I'd be remiss to not mention it. You need to consider the ticking clock. As you get older you'll find it takes more time and effort to develop expertise in new languages, frameworks, etc. And doubly so if you meet the right special someone and have a family. So if you're looking to better situate yourself for work that's more interesting and/or pays better, you should get moving on that plan ASAP.

* +1 on what everyone said about OSS involvement. ESPECIALLY if for whatever reason you're unable to leave your current job and location.

Once upon a time in Turin there was FIAT and work... now not so much... but is a beatiful city.

My email address is in my about page.