Which communities are good creative outlets for software development discussions?

StackOverflow is wonderful for Q&A style questions, but it is not in anyway a forum for discussing software engineering in general. Where do you go when you are not looking for a forum that is geared for helping people with problems, but just talking about design and development?

I've considered real life user groups (never been to one before, though). I don't know if these would be a good answer or not.

PS. I have searched SO quite a bit for a similar thread. We have tons covering other Q&A and also resource sites, but not any that I could find that are just开发者_如何学Python for discussion. I've also searched online myself, but its difficult to filter through all of the dead communities that litter the web. Help me!

http://chipy.org no kidding. We rock. Point being find a local user group in something more specific.