I've found that meetup.com and a free night a week serve as a great alternative. programming meetups have given me deeper discussions about software engineering or given me a chance to work firsthand with people in languages or frameworks I'm curious about.
Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
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Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#12Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#13http://devmaster.net for game development
Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#14On the startup side I'm often finding more things that are interesting to me on the community side of http://www.usv.com/
Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#15Reddit has gotten better recently, as long as you stay off the popular subreddits. Pick your 10 favorite hobbies or interests, and subscribe to those subreddits. It's got to be specific: not programming, but programming in Java; not electronics, but amateur radio; etc. (I will admit I enjoy r/AskReddit, which is where people write short stories in response to a prompt in the form of a loaded question. Ask Metafilter is much less creative, in comparison.)
A lot of people are recommending r/programming. r/programming is why I quit Reddit a few years ago. It's all "computer-related cult wars" rather than actual discussion about programming. Everyone goes through that stage in their programming career, but it's not interesting to read about, and most people eventually grow out of it. Not r/programming.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#16MetaFilter. You have to pay $5 to post comments, and the comments are formatted in such a way as to discourage trolling, long digressions, and other annoying Internet comment features. The material is usually not amazingly interesting to me, but the community is very pleasant.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#17Almost missed this post becasue this is one of my "I don't want to read any of these" titles.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#18I quite like Alex McCaw's http://monocle.io/ - It's quite similar in topic to HN, but with less of the news/gossip/drama stories.
It also moves a lot slower, so if you miss a few days, it's fine. Just one page or so of links will show you all the best from those few days.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#19Reddit has gotten better recently, as long as you stay off the popular subreddits. Pick your 10 favorite hobbies or interests, and subscribe to those subreddits. It's got to be specific: not programming, but programming in Java; not electronics, but amateur radio; etc. (I will admit I enjoy r/AskReddit, which is where people write short stories in response to a prompt in the form of a loaded question. Ask Metafilter…
My problem with /r/programming is the front page. If you go below 15th place you'll see a cesspool of posts with interesting looking titles, tons of downvotes and no comments explaining why. I feel like the readers there are too discriminating about what they'll allow, but at the same time nobody feels like submitting anything.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?
#20Subreddits! http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/ http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/ http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/ http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/ http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/ http://www.reddit.com/r/golang/ http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/