A New Chapter: DEV is Joining Forces with Major League Hacking (MLH)

Hey everyone, I have some massive news to share today, and I couldn't be more excited to finally...

Hey everyone,

I have some massive news to share today, and I couldn't be more excited to finally type these words.

DEV is officially joining forces and becoming part of the Major League Hacking (MLH) organization.

It has been quite an adventure getting to this point, and I view today not as an end, but as a genuine new beginning. As I write this, DEV is officially part of the MLH organization. The original team isn’t going anywhere, and I’m already hard at work in my new role at MLH.

We are incredibly excited to combine our resources to make DEV the best it can be, and likewise empower MLH and the Forem open source project—the software that powers the DEV community—to be the best they can be. This collaboration is about resource exchange, creative energy, and a unified vision for the future of software creators.

More than a Decade in the Making

For me, this journey started back in 2014 as a simple side project with the idea of fostering a better community among developers.

{% embed https://x.com/ThePracticalDev/status/500361112156897280 %}

It has been a long road since that first tweet. It has been almost 10 years since we officially formed the company, and I want to specifically mention my co-founders, @jess and @peter. We have been through so much together to get the platform to where it is today.

We are looking at this partnership as a chance to be incredibly optimistic about the next decade of software creation.

A Note of Gratitude

Before we look forward, I want to look at where we are right now. DEV would not exist without this community. To the moderators, the authors, the commenters, and everyone who has ever dropped a reaction on a post: thank you.

We have spent years building a safe, constructive online home for developers because we believe community is everything. This next step is a commitment to you—to ensure that this home remains sustainable, vibrant, and helpful for the long haul.

Bridging the Online and the IRL

If you don't know about MLH, they are the largest developer programs platform in the world. They have run hackathons, fellowships, meetups, open source programs, and more for over 1 million developers across 100 countries. What they've built is a place where people learn by doing: picking up a tool, building something real with it, and growing alongside other people in the process. In fact, 91% of MLH community members learn something through their events and programs that they are not learning in the classroom or at work.

At DEV, we deeply appreciate the magic that happens when people come together. By joining MLH, we are hopeful to get the absolute most out of that intersection. We want to bridge the gap between our distributed online conversations and the electric energy of the IRL community.

By joining MLH, we can connect what happens on DEV every day (the posts, the discussions, the knowledge sharing) with what happens at MLH events and programs (the hands-on building, the mentorship, the experimentation). A continuous path from conversation to creation. Online and IRL aren't separate worlds. They're two halves of how people actually learn, and we're excited to finally bring them together.

A Foundation of Trust

This isn’t a partnership between strangers. We have known MLH co-founders Swift and Jon since 2014, back when both of our organizations were just getting started in New York City. We grew our platforms in parallel, often running in the same circles and sharing the same struggles and triumphs of building for developers.

There is a deep shared experience here. Between the five of us founders, there is a profound empathy for the developer experience. Because we share that specific trust, shared principles, and a mutual understanding of the ecosystem, we know this integration will be smooth and authentic.

Navigating a Changing World

We all know the industry is shifting. With AI driving exponential growth, the way we work, code, and grow is evolving. The definition of "developer" is expanding to include a new wave of software creators—people building amazing things who might not have historically used that title.

As volume and quality increase, technical content is becoming more valuable than ever. Yet, learning is currently fragmented across Twitter, Hacker News, personal blogs, YouTube, and even AI prompts. DEV delivers a proven community-driven platform to explore and discuss that knowledge, while MLH brings hands-on experience with their developer programs.

We are incredibly excited about Swift and Jon's vision for this new reality. Our commitment to making the software industry an inclusive place where we share knowledge and help each other grow is as important as it's ever been.

This is especially true for CodeNewbie, a vital subcommunity that remains a core part of DEV. We are looking forward to putting energy and thought into how CodeNewbie reaches developers from non-traditional paths—especially as those paths are becoming more diverse and complex than ever in this new era.

We consider it critical to provide a space for people to level up their skills—explicitly helping developers learn how to maintain and grow their careers in this new reality. By being part of MLH, we are moving much closer to the education process, making us that much more optimistic that we can help developers navigate this shift and come out stronger on the other side.

Greatest Hits & New Energy

We look forward to replaying some of our "greatest hits" regarding community initiatives we want to reinvigorate. We are looking at immediate, community-first improvements—not sales initiatives—such as revamping our Trusted Moderator program and bringing back some of our most loved community initiatives.

But we also have new creative minds in the room now to do some of the best community-oriented work possible. We are ready to get creative again and bring back some of the distinctive fun and positive energy that we were more fully able to embrace in our earlier days.

Energizing and Clarifying Forem

We want to invest in making the DEV community as nourished as possible, but we also care deeply about the technology that powers it.

{% embed https://youtu.be/arLWMxMSlFI %}

This partnership will be a clarification of the distinction between DEV and Forem. It gives us a chance to properly foster Forem as a dedicated open source project which will power all of this forever into the future.

We plan to allow Forem to more independently serve the open source community and continue its mission. MLH and DEV will continue to serve as stewards, but we are actively seeking to find an arrangement that allows the Forem mission to thrive in its own, more distinguished capacity. We do not have this step entirely worked out, but in the coming months, we look forward to announcing creative and clarifying initiatives surrounding Forem as an amazing open source project.

Join the Conversation

We know you probably have questions, and we want to answer them.

We will be hosting a Fireside Chat tomorrow, February 19th, at 11:30 am ET. This will be streamed during Global Hack Week and will be viewable right here on the DEV homepage.

MLH co-founder @theycallmeswift will be moderating a Q&A session with myself, @jess, @peter, and @jonmarkgo. We would love to see you there.

The Next Decade

This is a chance for us to look forward to the brightest possible future. I am so impressed with what MLH has been able to accomplish, and I believe that DEV and MLH together can foster new and critical communities for career software developers, code newbies, AI hobbyists, and the ever-expanding world of software creators.

I am so proud of what we have built so far together, but I am even more excited about what comes next. These companies will survive and thrive through this new partnership, and I can’t wait to see what we build together.

As always, thank you for being here. Let’s get to work.

Happy Coding,

PBJ