Recently, I came upon an opportunity to do some discovery on a new and exciting content management system (CMS) called Payload. I set my sights on learning more and expanding my knowledge of NextJS, and I hit the ground running thanks to their effective and easy-to-navigate documentation! I was particularly excited to look into their current beta for version 3 (which, of course, they haven’t released yet). Because it was unreleased, I was left with questions I was dying to answer, but I wasn’t sure how. Although some documentation exists already, my interest led me down a new avenue for finding information. I gave the community forums on Discord a try and was pleasantly surprised with how responsive, knowledgeable, and overall willing to help everyone was!
This made me wonder, “How many times has a forum like Discord been accessible for a very specific technology and I’ve looked it over?” While not all forums for every technology are set up the same way, you’ll find they all share some things that can help you develop your next project!
Community Help Opportunity
The main reason I joined was to get help in a way that felt snappier than a thread on GitHub or a StackOverflow post. Interacting with a community on an app I already use (Discord) plugged into my day-to-day workflow more easily. If I had a question, within a few hours (usually 30 minutes), someone would respond with an answer. This alone has significantly unblocked me a few times when in need.
During one sprint, I worked for several days upgrading my project to a more current release of Payload. While I was able to get through some of this using documentation, I had a few hurdles along the way that would have taken much longer to get over had I not had this resource. Below is an example of the post(s) I would make, including screenshots (that I scrubbed of any data, of course).
I received an initial response within 30 minutes and, with a little bit of back-and-forth, I unblocked myself after about two hours. This sounds like a lot, but it would have taken me significantly more time otherwise! When closing these out, I tried to summarize what I learned in the last post I made, and then thanked anyone who helped me along the way.
Showcases/Useful Shares
When developing with any new technology, it’s easy to get sucked into whatever work you’re doing. In times like these, especially if you don’t have a pair, I can find myself lacking creativity and inspiration. Seeing other people share what they’re excited about in addition to any useful resources can spark productivity, too!
Sometimes it’s also beneficial to dig into new technology that’s related to what you’re working on. Through joining this community, I can find articles about dependencies such as Rich Text Editors (Lexical) that were relevant to the project. Additionally, I found some interesting code snippets using GitHub Gists. However, I don’t want to share those without permission (even if they are public).
General Feedback
Behind the technologies we use as developers are other developers! By providing feedback in any way that can be recorded, the teams responsible can make improvements along the way. These changes may take some time. However, there are some things you can take action on right away, like bugs.
Launching Your Professional Career with Forums
I wrote this post to bring awareness to and encourage online collaboration as software developers. Sometimes, the internet can feel like a silent, ever-expanding universe, but there is life out there if you know where to find it. At the end of the day, we are all people, and we value collaboration! Using the internet to make professional friends in your career is something I see as underutilized but highly valuable. You never know what inspiration or career opportunities someone you meet on these technical forums may lead to!