Where else do developers hang out?
Where else, apart from HN, do developers tend to hang, to get news, etc.? Are Reddit and StackExchange good places? Can anyone suggest other places?
I like StackExchange sites. My favorites stackoverflow.com and programmers.stackexchange.com You can chat with people there, discuss the white-board questions etc
Reddit's programmer subs are pretty nice, although they tend to be inactive for smaller languages/tools/topics.
Do people still use IRC? Where is active these days?
IRC channels for projects can be quite lively. The busiest channels I idle in are #ffmpeg-devel and #lua on freenode. Clearly these are dedicated towards these projects but sometimes other chat filters in. #lua certainly gets that.
Others can be much more quiet and be usually for tech support of a project but they can still be a good place to contact people working on a project.
Thanks for all the good suggestions. Appreciate it!
Real-world Meetup.com meetups.
I second this. I am a member of around 7 local developer focused meetups. I go to a meetup at least 1 or twice a month.