Introduction
If you've been active in the development space, I'm sure someone or the other has recommended you to join a community as it greatly speeds up your learning process and helps you to network and build connections. Well, it turns out they were right lol. Today I'm gonna be talking about my favourite dev communities. I'm primarily gonna be focusing on one of those communities though, and that one community is LearnWeb3DAO.
New Kid on the Block
Back in February 2022, I knew NOTHING about dev communities and how I could join them. All I did know was that I had to find off-campus remote opportunities in the space. Kunal Kushwaha, in a video of his, recommended everyone with such a goal to create a Twitter account and post about their tech journey there. That was when I first came across the concept of "learning in public". Since I was engaging and interacting with blockchain-related tweets, the Twitter algorithm led me to a learning community called LearnWeb3DAO (LW3) and the rest is history.
The Map that I Needed
If there's one thing that I've realized in my journey so far it's that LW3 is the best place to go for anyone who wants to become a web3 developer. I know I kind of sound like an official ambassador of LW3 but I can only wish that was true lol. They gave me the roadmap and the path that I needed to kickstart my web3 journey. They encouraged all their students to get their fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JS, React) strong and then focus on expanding their skillset. I made the mistake of not practising enough React but I was pointed in the right direction by a friend I made in LW3's Discord server: Abbas Khan. This brings me to my next topic.
Connections and Friendships
I made a lot of connections in LearnWeb3DAO's Discord server. I have had some private convos with one of their founders Haardik as well and he has often given me career advice and solved my doubts. I remember when I wanted to break into backend development and I asked him a very vague question: what is the difference between MongoDB, SQL and GraphQL? He gave me the most detailed possible and that too at 150wpm lol.
Abbas Khan, whom you might remember from the previous paragraph, played a pivotal role in my journey. He mentored me and taught me how important it is to stay disciplined and keep grinding no matter what happens. Every time I get a W or take an L, he is one of the first people I inform.
There are a lot of connections that turned into friendships. I met a lot of my connections-turned-friends at ETHIndia in December 2022. It was great to see them. Whenever I get stuck, need a hand, need some advice or am in search of a teammate for a hackathon, my LW3 friends help me out.
The LW3 Community Experience
The LearnWeb3 community is a very diverse and supportive one. Since there are members from all around the world, there is always someone online who can resolve your doubts. People are eager to jump on calls with you and help you debug your code.
However, it is more than just a doubt-resolution hub. LW3 members help each other out in other fields as well! Their Discord has a wellness channel where the members themselves organized a 100DaysOfFitness Challenge. There is also a channel that is made for finding hackathons to participate in and teammates you can participate with. If you have some time and want to get your hands dirty with the web3 stack or just want to discuss some ideas with the rest of the community, do check that channel out!
The pair programming channel is very useful for anyone looking for a learning buddy. We used to have JavaScript sessions there back in the early days. The community members also give career advice to anyone who needs it, based on whichever domain they specialize in. There is a showcase channel as well where we can show off our builds and get tips about how we can improve. We also have community calls on Discord and, more frequently, Spaces on Twitter where we discuss LW3's progress, both as a platform and as a community.
Team LW3 Gives Back!
In dev communities, there is a tradition of the founding members "giving back" to the community members. I really don't know why it's called that and I think it should instead be called "giving more" because just being a part of a community gives one multiple benefits already. However, I'm not here to talk about terminologies and their origins so let's keep that to one side 😆.
We have had many giveaways and fun events in LW3 for the community members. There are also tiers which get assigned to you based on your contributions to LW3. Coming from a silver contributor himself, you can believe anyone who tells you that the LW3 takes its community members' contributions into account and rewards them accordingly. For example, a few months back, LW3 was hiring teaching assistants. Their criterion was that the applicant should have a contribution tier of gold or above. In the end, Larry Cutts got selected and it was no surprise, as he was THE most active and helpful dev in the server. For us silver contributors, they are planning to ship out some schwag. As a dev, it goes without saying that I'm eagerly waiting for my LW3 schwag t-shirt!
How It Benefitted Me
The LW3 community has helped me in countless ways. I owe most of my growth as a developer to LW3. They gave me a roadmap to follow, helped me get back on the right path when I digressed. Back in Feb 2022, I only knew Python, basic HTML and CSS. I now know Git and GitHub, Tailwind CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Next.js, Solidity, Hardhat, ethers.js, NodeJS, Express, Mongoose and MongoDB. So I'm basically a MERN stack + blockchain developer.
LearnWeb3DAO doesn't teach all the stuff that I mentioned above as they focus more on the blockchain part of things. However, thanks to their website and also just by staying in the community and making connections, I knew where I should go for learning some particular tech. My GitHub profile is now buzzing with projects, and it's about to get a whole lot better ;)
Other Great Dev Communities
I am full of praise for LearnWeb3DAO, but that doesn't mean that it is the only good web3 dev community out there. Here are some other communities that I like:
buildspace: The community and its founders have the notion of just "shipping" (building and deploying); no matter how much is done, no matter how bad it looks, and no matter how many people you think will like it. They promote building in public as many times, a product that you think will be liked by very few people ends up getting attention from a whole lot of people. This will end up giving you more motivation to build out your project to the final stage. Not to mention the funding you might receive from an investor if your project catches their eye.
thirdweb: This is more of a niche community but since I use a lot thirdweb's tooling, it has been a great experience for me to be a part of their server. Their devrel team is BEYOND amazing. Every time I had a doubt, they created a special thread for me in their support channel and debugged my code. Hats off to the team 🫡
Valist: Valist is actually a protocol, not a learning platform or community. However, the people there are very helpful and will do their best to resolve any development-related issues you have.
Conclusion
My recommendation to anyone starting their dev journey would be to join a community that suits their niche. There is no loss whatsoever, just benefits. You get to make new connections who might just end up becoming lifelong friends!
Thank You!
Thank you so much for reading this blog to the end! I hope you enjoyed it and are tempted to join a dev community! See you in the next one. Till then, ciao 👋