Handmade Cities Guide

2026

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Handmade Cities (HMC) calls this year a period of quiet growth: making sure offline meetups reach a critical mass of attendees. The term offline is very important, because social media may not be used for our own advertisement.

Our founder’s made it clear competent programmers must leave for-profit social media. In February 2026 the following accounts will be deleted:

Employment Opportunities

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Handmade Cities offers a job referral program as a free community service. We have a solid track record, for many years, where dozens of companies hire Handmade devs thanks to our referrals!

For Employers

If you’re a boss, hiring manager, or simply a well-connected engineer contact us if you’re looking to work with systems programmers who care about making quality software.

For Engineers

Software engineers wanting to get hired by Handmade-friendly companies should reach out as well. We have a priority list which works out as follows:

Funding

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Handmade Cities (HMC) is a small business wholly owned and operated by Abner Coimbre. HMC offers the following community services for free:

Free Community Services

Job referral program: see Employment Opportunities
Mass-newsletter system used by local meetups
Training and guidance for meetup hosts
Self-hosted chat server

These genuinely cost time, money, or both. However, it’s entirely self-funded by HMC. For example we never charge fees when connecting employers with engineers.

Regular Members

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Handmade meetups are monthly gatherings for programmers who enjoy digging into how computers actually work. We also welcome other tech workers, such as artists and cybersecurity professionals, to help us craft polished and secure software.

The community is famous for its obsession with performance and making things snappy or buttery smooth. As we enter our second decade, Handmade Cities has a vested interest in proper UI and UX (affectionately dubbed UXUI, pronounced ooks-wee.)

2027

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Great Convention

Contact Us

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As we don’t have social media, the most efficient way to reach out is by sending us emails.

Founder

Our founder is Abner Coimbre. As the community organizer he’s unfortunately the busiest member (send a reminder after three business days if there’s no response.)

Meetup Hosts

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Meetup hosts are the lifeblood of Handmade Cities, and we depend on them to grow decentralized offline meetups all over the world. In this guide we discuss their responsibilities before deciding to volunteer.

Meetup Principles

We require every meetup host to abide by two principles:

You care about software quality
Your love for the craft extends beyond a paycheck

We don’t want our coding meetups to devolve into a generic networking club, padding GitHub stars and sharing resumes. We’ve met too many people perfectly content with stitching together black boxes or calling magic functions, without an ounce of technical curiosity. Those programmers don’t belong with us.

Volunteering

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This page is a work-in-progress. However, we could use immediate help with the following:

Subscribe to a meetup near you and tell your friends about it!
If you’re a programmer, become a meetup host for your area
Employers should notify us about job offers. We’ll introduce you to competent candidates at no cost to you

Quickstart

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Welcome to Handmade Cities!

Many of us are systems programmers, and we’re often really into making video games, but we’re also a community of software professionals who adore the craft in general and care about quality. If you embody our ethos one way or another you’re more than welcome here.

Chat Server

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We’ve tried many services: we dabbled on IRC, worked closely with the Matrix team and even attempted a Discord server. Ultimately we’ve landed with Revolt.

Coworking

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We have in-person meetups all year round. Usually, these are just monthly meetups: once a month we demo the coolest projects or have round-table discussions.

However, some cities also offer co-working sessions: these are more informal and happen more regularly.

What to Expect

We’re a mixed bag of programmers in these sessions. Some do remote work for their normal 9-5 job (they even have Slack open!) while others are indie devs working on a serious product. There’s also those who take time off their work for a side project.

Handmade Cities Guide

2026

Mass-Delete Social Media link

Employment Opportunities

For Employers link

For Engineers link

Funding

Free Community Services link

Regular Members

2027

Contact Us

Founder link

Meetup Hosts

Meetup Principles link

Volunteering

Quickstart

Chat Server

Coworking

What to Expect link

Mass-Delete Social Media

For Employers

For Engineers

Free Community Services

Founder

Meetup Principles

What to Expect