Any programmers/coders/IT enthusiasts out there?

I'm someone who's recently got the bug. So far, gotten myself up to how to retain data in json files. I must say, struggling though all the Unity/C# forums I'm so impressed and endeared by the generous spirits of coders. So many other communities covet their knowledge. Coders need to nurture each other because with clean-coding in shared systems, everyone's code benefits. I really didn't expect to experience such a deep level of connection to something so much bigger than myself. So, I think I get what you're missing and looking for right now.

Maybe game-dev-jams could be a fun thing. The grown-up coders I learn from seem to get a lot out of them. My guess is they'd be at least slightly less intense than hack-a-thons.

Yes absolutely! I'm a full-time IT nerd who kinda went a bit against the grain in my learning pathway; between that and my assorted mental health problems and neurospiciness I didn't really fit the mould there. I'm about 5 years post-uni now and managed to land in my dream job as a programmer and data engineer.

Most of my stuff is around Python, JavaScript, cloud databases and getting into AI and machine learning a bit as well. I'm a mega Linux fanboi, and even had it on my work computer at one point but sadly had to revert back to Windows because that's the world we live in 😞 so I'm often switching between Windows (with lots of WSL) and macOS.

Also, highly highly recommend getting yourself involved with an open source project if you can (I'd aim for something kinda small and niche). You don't even have to be a particularly good programmer to help with a lot of the "low hanging fruit" (in fact, oftentimes you don't have to be a programmer at all because there's always documentation etc to be done) and the open source community is incredible.

Repositories online

github

gitlab

It's just that it's not that great for human connection re depression and I don't have people to talk to regarding IT stuff... eg I felt really down recently after I found some very minor things in an open source mindmap program and I gave a solution to fix a minor issue with a script installing a markdown export filter because I couldn't talk to anyone who understood WSL, bash, script, Linux, KDE as terms...

So you fork the code and do pull requests...

And if it is seen as an improvement it will get merged or fix issues.

https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/about-pull-requests

Hey sorry -- thought I replied but didn't.

GitHub is a great resource, you can look behind the scenes at a lot of various projects. Microsoft has some cool stuff on there, you can look at the Linux kernel, but I also find it a really good source of information for other stuff that's not necessarily even coding related, like this "Awesome Remote Job" thing.

Lots of ways you can get started either with simple code fixes (and I mean REALLY simple - my first one was changing a (c) to a © symbol in an About window): https://github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beginners

And if you speak another human language, you could even get involved with translating, documentation or anything like that!

Projects are always looking for help with testing and data stuff too.

Hope this helps!