Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about creating a small developer community around the things I build and experiment with.
Not really a “startup community”.
Not a generic Discord server.
Not another “AI wrapper” space either.
More like a place where people who still enjoy software engineering itself can hang around, test ideas, discuss systems, and watch projects evolve in real time.
Some of my projects use AI features too, obviously.
But I don’t want everything to become only AI-focused.
I still care a lot about:
- architecture
- developer experience
- automation
- unusual systems
- solving annoying technical problems
- experimenting with ideas that don’t really fit into “normal software”
A lot of software today feels overly repetitive to me.
Same structures.
Same dashboards.
Same architectures copied over and over again.
I’m personally more interested in:
- building alternatives to overly complicated systems
- creating tools that feel different
- solving problems that don’t really have good solutions yet
- experimenting with ideas that make developers stop and think for a minute 😅
And honestly, I think software becomes way more interesting when people can actively react to it while it’s evolving.
That’s one of the reasons I want to build this community in the first place.
I want developers to:
- test things early
- criticize ideas honestly
- observe projects while they grow
- share their own systems and experiments
- brainstorm together
- influence future directions naturally
The first people around will probably also get early access to future platforms, experimental features, private builds, and things like that.
But honestly, the biggest reason I want to create this community isn’t really to market my own software or attract attention to projects.
For me, even 3-4 genuinely passionate people already counts as a real community.
I think the bigger reason is that I’ve noticed something strange in a lot of software communities and servers lately.
Maybe it’s just my experience, I don’t know.
But many spaces feel weirdly aggressive.
Very distant.
Very hard to feel comfortable in.
Sometimes there are overly strict rules.
Sometimes even a small misunderstanding can suddenly turn into massive negative reactions.
Sometimes people become hostile over software discussions that honestly shouldn’t become hostile at all.
I’ve experienced this both while sharing projects and even during normal technical conversations.
And maybe I’m not the only developer who feels disconnected from those environments.
Maybe there are other people too:
- developers who enjoy building things
- developers who think differently
- developers who don’t fit into hyper-aggressive communities
- developers who still want software discussions to feel human
I don’t know if the software ecosystem actually became this aggressive over time, or if I just keep running into the wrong places.
But something inside me keeps saying:
“try building the kind of environment you wish existed.”
So that’s what I’m trying to do.
I also want to organize small software conference-style sessions sometimes.
Nothing super formal.
Just developers taking turns and talking about:
- what they built
- why they built it
- what problem it solves
- how the architecture works
- what failed during development
- what weird ideas they tried
I genuinely think hearing developers talk passionately about their own systems is one of the most interesting parts of programming.
Still slowly organizing everything for now.
Just wanted to share the idea somewhere because maybe there are other developers who miss this kind of environment too.