Use Reddit Effectively as a Developer
Table of Contents
Reddit is a website that contains collections of communities in which people talk about any interest they have. Anything you can think of. The variability of how it may contain everything brings great opportunities for everyone to learn and explore new things.
Adding the word “Reddit” to your Google searches when asking specific questions give you solid ideas about what a community of people might think with the comments below, rather than following up on simple writings on the vast information sources on the internet. It also may widen your view by seeing different perspectives at once and not limit you to one person’s ideas on the subject.
Now let’s take a look at how we can use Reddit effectively as a developer and what we might get from it.
Why Reddit
Internet is full of ideas of everyone that ever submits anything to it. Finding your people might be a bit hard when you have more options than you wish for. The subreddit system of Reddit brings like-minded people together and creates a space for them to share their knowledge and ask questions.
The fact that the users don’t get paid to give feedback or share their knowledge on subjects is a useful advantage for being completely objective.
Helping others with your knowledge also creates a space for the growth of the communities. The word community is in the foreground and should be getting attention here.
How to use Reddit as a developer
Here are some effective ways to get the best out of using Reddit as a programmer:
1. Read the wiki and sidebar
Not only do the sidebars in every subreddit include the rules that you should be following but also they have other subreddits that you can join to widen your network. The more subreddit you join the more people you might get in touch with and increase the likelihood of learning something new.
The wikis usually include the basics of what you should know and give resources for you to discover. As a beginner, reading the wikis can be a nice start to get into whichever type of coding you want to give a chance. As you get to see more of the questions of others, you will have more knowledge about what the community is talking about as some subreddits might have specific abbreviations.
2. Subreddit rules are important
Some subreddits allow self-promotion, which is highly useful when you want to talk about your new project or you want to promote your company or start-up. However, some of them do not allow self-promotion and might delete your post or you might even get banned. The ban would only prevent you from posting or commenting, though, it is best to follow the rules to get the best out of that community.
3. Reach people
The best side of it all is that you will be interacting with real people to find solutions to your problems or help them solve their problems. It is a great place to find your people and even make friends with like-minded people. Since you will be facing many problems as you get more into coding, having your people to help will be a great relief when you just can’t get that line of code right.
Some of the subreddits even lead to Discord servers in which you can communicate with people in an even easier way. It would also be great practice for communication skills, too, which is some developers don’t get to work on if they aren’t working with a team.
4. Getting hired
Reddit is a great platform to show off your coding skills and share your knowledge or opinions on things. Many people get hired through Reddit nowadays as some employers look for skills rather than experience. It could be used somewhat as a portfolio for programmers to keep their ideas in one place, even though GitHub is the popular opinion for keeping your projects in one place.
5. Which subreddits to follow
Some of the subreddits that you can follow are under the name of the programming languages that you are using. For example, if you’re working with CSS, the subreddit that you’ll want to head to will be r/css. Here are some of the others that come to mind at first but you can look for others, too:
r/reactjs and more
However, if you’d like to get into the more general subreddits or you do not know where to start yet as a developer, these could be a good start:
maybe even r/web_design if you are more into the design side of things, in which case you might want to take a look here.
When you subscribe to these subreddits, it’ll be easier to keep up with the developers’ community and be in contact with them. If you have any ideas for a project you don’t trust your coding skills yet and need a developer to make that project come true, you can contact us. We can build your projects together.
