[PythonistaCafe] What makes PythonistaCafe different

Hey there,

Mastering Python is *not* just about getting the books and courses to study—to be successful you also need a way to stay motivated and to grow your abilities in the long run.

Many Pythonistas I know are struggling with this.

It's simply a lot less fun to build your Python skills completely alone.

If you're a self-taught developer with a non-technical day job it's hard to grow your skills all by yourself.

And with no coders in your personal peer group, there's nobody to encourage or support you in your endeavor of becoming a better developer.

Maybe you're already working as a developer, but no one else at your company shares your love for Python.

It's frustrating when you can't share your learning progress with anyone or ask for advice when you feel stuck.

From personal experience I know that existing online communities and social media don't do a great job at providing that support network either:

Stack Overflow is for asking focused, one-off questions. It's hard to make a human connection with fellow commenters on the platform. Everything is about the facts, not the people. For example, moderators will freely edit other people's questions, answers, and comments. It feels more like a wiki than a forum.

Twitter is like a virtual water cooler and great for "hanging out" but it's limited to messages that can only be a few sentences long at a time. Not great for discussing anything substantial. If you're not constantly online you'll miss out on most of the conversations. Slack chat groups suffer from the same flaws.

Hacker News is for discussing and commenting on tech news. It doesn't foster long-term relationships between commenters. It's also one of the most aggressive communities in tech right now with little moderation and a borderline toxic culture.

Reddit takes a broader stance and encourages more "human" discussions than Stack Overflow's one-off Q&A format. But it's a huge public forum with millions of users and has all of the associated problems: toxic behavior, overbearing negativity, people lashing out at each other, jealousy, ... In short, all the best parts of the human behavior spectrum.

Eventually I realized that what holds so many developers back is their limited access to the global Python coding community. That's why I founded PythonistaCafe, a peer-to-peer learning community for Python developers.

At the center of PythonistaCafe are the core values of our community that we ask all members to adhere to.

Our core values and application process for new members create a certain type of culture in the community.

It's one of collaboration and helpfulness. It's one where you can form genuine relationships with other members, learn from one another and give back to other members who are newer. It also fosters collaboration.

An open community tends to be more guarded and cutthroat because people need to keep each other at "arms length."

You can read the PythonistaCafe Core Values at the link below:

-> https://www.pythonistacafe.com/core-values

— Dan Bader

Key phrases

oneoff QampA format global Python coding community virtual water cooler Slack chat groups technical day job personal peer group existing online communities huge public forum human behavior spectrum peer learning community borderline toxic culture PythonistaCafe Core Values

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