Lonely as a developer

Does anyone else find themselves to be lonely as web development students? Nobody I know in real life is interested, so I can’t really talk about what I’m doing. Online I find it hard to connect with anyone. As a result it’s hard to stay motivated or see any value in what I’m learning.

I’ve applied for the May Chingu cohort, so maybe that will help. In general, though, I just feel really isolated, like I’m learning on an island somewhere.

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I think it is normal to feel a little bit isolated at times, I think we all do, since we have to spend hours on end glued to the computer.

I would suggest going into the chat room for FCC, people there are really friendly and coding is being discussed all day, so you get to learn and have conversations with other campers. It is really good, since you get to learn a lot from the others and you can also comment/share your code, which makes it really fun and interactive.

Hope this helps, be sure to check out the chat rooms!

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There are tons of real-life FCC groups around the world which you can find through either Facebook or Meetup.com, which can be great for teaming up with other people.

And Meetup.com is a fantastic resource in general to find groups of all kinds, including for tech. No matter where you are I’m willing to bet there’s at least one group of programmer-type people near you that’s active on Meetup.com. I’ve met a surprising number of people who have actually done coding bootcamps at the meetups that I’ve been to, as I wasn’t sure how popular bootcamps really were but apparently they draw more attention than I thought.

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It was my case but now a meet with others campers Thanks to the FCC groups near of my city.

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I think that studying in general is a pretty lonely endeavour. You spend hours and hours of your time doing something that is not really interesting to others around you. Sometimes I want to talk about web dev to my spouse or friends but I know they’re not really interested. So yeah, I feel you.

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Yes! You described exactly the feel

The FCC meetups in my area are unfortunately dead. :disappointed: I’ve had the Meetup app for some time but have yet to get the courage to attend an event.

In my opinion, once you’re passionate enough about any subject you should be able to talk about it with other people even if they don’t understand all the technical stuff. Web development can be very exciting if you frame it correctly. Of course, your average Joe won’t understand if you suddenly go on about CMS or functional programming. You can simplify the subject by talking about all the cool stuff you can build from scratch or somehow relating it to the tangible world.

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Well, good thing is we are all here for you, and can talk about web dev ( or any other kind of dev ) anytime you want!

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Yeah, I feel you on this. One of the problems with FCC is that it’s too popular, and thus it’s easy to get lost in the crowd, especially on the gitter chat. After all, you can’t possibly connect with thousands of people all at once!

It is possible, but I think takes repeated meaningful engagement* here on the forums and in the chat channels. Eventually you learn something about frequent posters, and they learn something about you. But in the interim it can feel lonely: other frequent posters may ignore you for a practical reason: they don’t know you or know if you will stick around. No one wants to invest time in someone that will just bail in a few weeks.

Chingu will help because of the pure numbers game… But it’s not a panacea. I’d have all the same recommendations for connecting there as I do here.

*: Not passive listening, not just chiming in with “me too”, not just asking for help. IMO the best way to meaningfully engage is to try to help other people, though this too can feel lonely if they accept your help and never return.

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When I nail a challenge I jump up and shout like a WWE wrestler winning a match… lots of 'YEAH!"s and flexing. So I have to be alone when I code.

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I get a bit of that, but that’s because I am a painfully shy introvert. In all facets of my life.

Coding is kind of a relief because I don’t have to work on group projects in a meeting room listening to all the A-type extroverts talk on and on about how they would do it.

Much rather isolate myself and get to work. but that’s just me…

incidentally… ran into this a few years back and went ‘ah-HA!’ I love being lonely

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tons of selfie high fives too :wink:

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Get pair programming. I do it all the time. Not for every project but regularly. We user Google hangouts, Skype or Screenhero.

(By the way, I have paired with people who live in Norway, India, Pakistan and USA as well as UK where I live so location is not an issue.)

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This is one of the things I love about fCC. I pop into the gitter help each night to help out and meet people waking up halfway around the world and in the middle of their day on the other side of the world…

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Keep the sidebar open with Gitter chat.

Also, Check out
ResearchAstute “See The Edges of Your World”
&
Kohortz ‘n’ Cohortz “Curated Cohort Sprints for Science & Efficiency Research”

Working on building a team HUD for the web and coding first.
Think “World of Warcraft” & “EVE” meets AutoCAD, Sublime, & Illustrator (etc…).

I’ve had a lot going on which’s slowed things down; however, in the same vein as Korean Friends “Chingu”.

Will put links to google docs in the gitrep soon.

When studying, yes. I too feel lonely, but a method that may circumvent that loneliness is studying in a public area (I.e. Barnes & Noble, your local library, a college/ university library). While attending university, I found that I was more productive and felt less lonely studying in such places where I know other people are quietly studying or working. Just try it out and see if it works :slight_smile:

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I don’t know what area you live in, but I attended my first meet-ups recently, and it has been good to meet other developers. Some of them were literally just presentations and pizza, but others were more about networking. You should try one - what is the worst that will happen? There are other people in the same position as you looking for like-minded friends/acquaintances.

No. My introvert level is > 9000

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I just finished up my first cohort. It has been a great experience. The accountability aspect of it has helped me a lot. I went from feeling similar to how you described. I felt like I was just messing around on the computer but not getting very far. The group has helped me put a project or two under my belt and work in a virtual team.

On a side note, I just went to my first in-person meetup for HTML and CSS today. It was basic compared to where I am on Free Code Camp now but well worth it for the social and networking aspect.

Good luck with the May cohort!

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