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Community Complexities Community has various meanings in tech. StackOverflow claims to be the “most trusted community of software developers.” 😏 We speak of open source communities and programming language communities. We have mailing lists, Slacks, Discords, social media, and in-person meetups. Some people feel part of identity-based communities. Outside of tech, I see people touting the benefits of being part of a community, especially as a solution to the loneliness crisis. A speaker I was watching yesterday alluded to the story in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers about how important community was to the health of the Roseto family of Italian immigrants. Last week I was at a potluck to celebrate the full moon where the organizers emphasized the healing power of community, and they were referring to the present group, even though we didn’t really know each other. I often encounter articles and books advocating for “community care” over “self care” as a solution to burnout. There’s something to all of this—humans are social creatures and we need community! However… I also sometimes cringe when I see the word “community.” That might surprise you, especially since I’ve given a talk on creating compassionate tech communities, so allow me to explain. I thought I had a community of sorts on Twitter before the pandemic. We’d all talk about compassion in tech, and I felt I’d finally found like-minded people. I felt a sense of belonging like I hadn’t found before. Many of you on this mailing list may have been part of that, and I certainly appreciated our interactions. During the trying days of the pandemic, though, I saw how certain corners of this "community” started enforcing a conformity in thinking around technologies, pandemic policies, and various political issues. I even got caught up in it myself (sorry). But at some point, I realized, wait a second, this isn’t very compassionate. What have I become? I understood the strong emotions, of course, and I worked to cultivate compassion for the behavior, but something shifted—I realized that despite having 28K+ connections at the time, I didn’t actually have a community, at least not one where I felt people were generally accepted and supported, and given the benefit of the doubt, like I would hope for in a true community. I’ve felt a more secure sense of community in the gleaning group I volunteer with or even the regulars at the local karaoke nights I attend (karaoke’s great practice for tech conference speaking, by the way). They know me to some degree, and they trust I’m coming from a good place, even if we disagree. I remember reading in Alan Jacobs’s How to Think a few years back: “The genuine community is open to thinking and questioning, so long as those thoughts and questions come from people of goodwill.” He goes on to say, “The only real remedy for the dangers of false belonging is the true belonging to, true membership in, a fellowship of people who are not so much like-minded as like-hearted.” That really resonates; even as I typed that, I sighed a bit of relief. That is what I am looking for, like-hearted people. And I believe that includes the people on this list! This ties in to what I’ve written in previous newsletters about expanding our circles of compassion and avoiding binary thinking. I don’t believe everyone in a community needs to agree about every issue, even the really important ones. I think it comes down to treating people with “honesty, dignity and respect,” as the bridge-building organization Braver Angels puts it. Earlier this week, there was controversy in the Turbo/TypeScript/Ruby/Rails/JavaScript community (is that even a thing?) about the removal of TypeScript from the Turbo project. Many people seemed to feel this was a betrayal of the community. I’ll be honest: I first encountered the situation through DHH’s defense, which actually seemed reasonable (*shields self from arrows*). As I read more about it and thought more about how DHH’s past decisions have affected various communities, I could also understand the intense pushback, though. My point here is that I would love for our developer communities (however we define that) to be able to discuss these issues without so much animosity. I’ve thought about building a proper community around Compassionate Coding—setting up an online platform, especially to discuss course materials, etc. The idea has overwhelmed me in the past because I know I won’t be able to please everyone. But I do think there’s potential to connect like-hearted people, and I’d like to try. So, I would love to hear from you—what are your thoughts on community? What does it really mean? What’s important in a community?
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