Developer Resources
A curated collection of events, learning paths, and community resources for software developers in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, maintained by La Vida Financial as part of our commitment to serving the local tech community.
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Upcoming Meetups and Events
April 2026
UXperience Conference: Design Between Spaces
UX Club at UT Dallas
Full-day UX conference featuring keynotes on accessibility, inclusive design, healthcare UX, and emerging technologies. Includes speed networking with industry professionals.
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM CT • Sciences Building SCI 1.210, UT Dallas (Richardson) In-Person
📍 800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson, TX 75080
Vibes, Flows, Code - Agentic AI Social
easiest.ai Frisco & DFW Meetup
Vibe coding, LLM runtimes (ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM), agentic flows with Flowise and LangChain, and tools like Claude Code and Cursor. Bring a personal device.
4:00 PM - 8:00 PM CT • New Frisco Library In-Person
📍 8000 Dallas Pkwy, Frisco, TX
Data-Oriented Programming - Version 1.1
JavaMUG
Presenter: Nicolai Parlog
Nicolai Parlog (Java Developer Advocate, Oracle) introduces data-oriented programming principles, modeling data immutably with records and sealed types, and pattern matching for polymorphic behavior.
6:30 PM - 9:00 PM CT • Improving (Plano) In-Person
📍 5445 Legacy Dr, Suite 100 Plano, TX 75024
Elastic on Private GCP + Getting Started with Docker for Security Use Cases
Elastic Dallas User Group
Presenter: Godfrey Menezes, Kenneth Ellington
Godfrey Menezes (EPAM Systems) on deploying Elastic on private GCP, and Kenneth Ellington (Security Threat Hunter) on Docker for real-world security applications.
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM CT • Improving (Plano) In-Person
📍 5445 Legacy Dr, Suite 100 Plano, TX 75024
Big Design 2026 Conference
Big Design DFW
Three-day design conference (April 28-30) featuring career workshops, keynotes, and networking with the DFW creative community. Limited seating.
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM CT • Palace Arts Center (Grapevine) In-Person
📍 300 S Main St, Grapevine, TX 76051
Kyle Forster: Building Your Own AI SRE
GDG Cloud Southlake
Presenter: Kyle Forster
Kyle Forster (RunWhen) on using AI to automate workflows across Platform Engineering, DevOps, and SRE roles. AI SREs are called one of the top 5 uses for AI in Engineering.
4:30 PM - 6:30 PM CT • Online Virtual
GDG DFW Social Club #26
GDG Cloud Southlake
In-person social gathering with appetizers and networking. Sponsored by RunWhen.
4:00 PM - 7:00 PM CT • Flying Saucer Draught Emporium (Cypress Waters) In-Person
📍 3111 Olympus Boulevard, Dallas, TX
Featured Developer Communities
Dallas Software Developers
📍 Yum! Restaurants International (Plano)
🗓️ Monthly meetups
Community-driven network offering twice-monthly meetups, hands-on workshops, mentorship, free project cohorts, hackathons, and an annual conference to help developers build skills, showcase real-world work, and grow together.
Java Metroplex User Group
📍 Improving (Plano)
🗓️ Monthly meetups
Dedicated to advancing Java through high-quality technical presentations, interactive discussions, and mentorship across Java platforms, APIs, and real-world applications.
DFW Pythoneers
📍 Improving (Plano)
🗓️ Monthly meetups
Community offering twice-monthly social and hands-on technical meetups with educational talks spanning web development, databases, systems administration, and game programming for all experience levels.
Big Design DFW
📍 Improving (Plano)
🗓️ Monthly meetups
Dallas–Fort Worth chapter of UXPA International, bringing designers together through monthly meetups, workshops, conferences, and networking to share best practices, showcase local talent, and elevate UX across the region’s leading companies.
Dallas TechXchange
📍 Toyota Connected North America (Plano)
🗓️ Monthly meetups
Community uniting software, product, DevOps, design, and Agile professionals to share knowledge, solve real-world challenges, and foster sustainable, customer-focused collaboration across modern technology organizations.
GDG Cloud Southlake
📍 Southlake
🗓️ Monthly meetups
Brings cloud practitioners together across the Dallas–Fort Worth area to explore Google Cloud Platform, travel technology, and emerging trends across modern cloud ecosystems through community, learning, and shared discovery.
Free Learning Resources
Udemy
Access thousands of free courses covering programming languages, web development, mobile apps, data science, and more. Requires a library card to access premium courses for free through your local library.
freeCodeCamp
Comprehensive curriculum with professional certifications in responsive web design, JavaScript, front-end libraries, data visualization, and more. Learn by building real projects and contributing to nonprofits.
The Odin Project
Open-source full-stack curriculum covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, and databases. Project-based learning with a supportive community and clear learning paths.
Harvard CS50
Harvard's legendary introduction to computer science covering algorithms, data structures, web development, and more. Free through edX with optional paid certificate.
Developer Roadmaps
Visual learning paths for frontend, backend, DevOps, and other tech career tracks. Interactive guides showing what to learn and in what order to become job-ready.
Java - University of Helsinki
Comprehensive Java programming course from one of Europe's top universities. Hands-on exercises with automated feedback and no prior programming experience required.
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