[RobGR]

Real world meetups for joint hacking are better than online collaboration. If the goal is to learn from other programmers, you learn a lot more by sitting next to them. A lot of it is incidental stuff you would not have thought to ask, like tricks in vi and emacs and etc. Another reason to work with someone is it provides a kind of social discipline, you feel you have to get something done on the project on a semi-regular basis. A weekly hacking session at a coffeehouse or someones apartment provides that regular discipline, and because the hacking sessions inevitably end, physical meetings can keep a side project from growing and taking over the rest of your life.

The "just work on a open-source project" advice isn't that bad, but you should pick something that you would benefit from improving. It is still a good idea to solict others to help you in a physical meeting, however. Find people who would benefit from improvement in the same project.

I think rather than a website or webapp, what you are looking for is a computer club. I go to a weekly meeting in Austin of ALE, a linux users group. We meet 7 pm to 11:30 pm, and we are an "experimental" group, in that we never have presentations or a planned agenda -- people bring computers with problems and we fix them, new people show up asking for help learning linux, etc. There are about 5 people there who come regularly with programming issues, ranging from side-business startup sites that are in php and mysql to hobbiest robots.

If you are really serious about this, find a place (possibly your house or apartment) and have a "Saturday afternoon hack-a-thon" every week or every other week. If you provide food and coffee people will come. Your main problem is likely to be keeping non-programmers from showing up and just talking.

If you have trouble finding a place to do this, see if you can locate a co-working or "jelly" type place in your area. A co-working place might let you use the area during non-business hour such as on weekends, and the jelly people probably know all the good coffeehouses.

[fsav]

The reason I was thinking of online projects has to do with having critical mass for a given technology (say Django) in a given place (say Montreal, where I'm located). In Montreal, for example, Rails seems to enjoy more popularity, and Django seems more isolated (just a feeling). So if I was to organize Django-themed meetups, the circle would be limited (again I'm not sure, but just to illustrate).

You could say I'm being picky here, but why not use the power of the Web which is a known solution for such situations? And btw real-world meetups often happen after online ones.

I don't have anything against real-world meetups, but I just came back from one, and there were presentations, but only a single project and you worked with people you already knew, mostly. So I didn't end up meeting much people, as chatting without a goal in mind isn't, err, my greatest strength. I'd really like something much more goal-oriented. The Six hour startup formula is really good, in that sense.

Thanks for the suggestions, though. I have heard of Free Hacker meetups in my area, for example, and I really should try showing up at one. Yet I think the goal is a bit different.

[RobGR]

The power of the web is a known solution in such situations, and I can see how you would lean that way. It's a good idea to cast a wide net, to learn things from people so far away that before the internet you would not have had that opportunity.

But it is still harder to learn by reading other people's code and looking at a message board than it is by sitting right next to them. So if there are local interested people, you should find them.

Also consider that as well as you learning from other people, other people can learn from you. If the Montreal community is oriented towards Rails instead of Django right now, would not be a service to expose people to Django ? Isn't it likely that there are a number of people in Montreal who are feeling the same way you are, and would jump at a chance to do some joint learning of Django, but they know of only the Rails groups ?

I'm not against the online collaboration part, and if your idea of group programmer's projects takes off there will need to be a way to find similarly interested programmers, so there will have to be a web site. But if all you do is put up a web site now, I think it will just sit as another abandoned web page on the internet; but if you find people and start interacting with them, the web site will get written by someone in due time.

[fsav]

In fact, in my wild dreams concerning this idea, there's also a part for real-world projects: people could indicate an interest in such or such technology, yes, but could also filter by location, or a real-world meetup could be suggested when it makes sense.

And indeed I'd like it to be a way for people unfamiliar with a technology, but curious about its basics, to meet people of complementary/similar skills.

I understand that the location feature wouldn't solve the "sit alone in the dark" problem in and by itself, though. We'll have to come up with ways to market the idea, that's very clear (perhaps by targeting some niches first?). But I believe there's a potential to it, since I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in the situation, as you say.

[fsav]

(Looking back on this, mentioning Rails seems to not make any sense, but the reason is deep in my fuzzy subconscious: there's a Montreal meeting for Rails called Montreal on Rails)