In most places there are software meetups, in my area there are many at meetup.com. I once started one myself, that later got taken over and is still quite big. Actually a lot of fun, and at the time we would even get sponsoring offers quite quickly.
Tangentially, over the last decade or two Meetup.com has allowed me to meet countless people in multiple countries, of whom some became friends. I've got such value out of this commercial service that I frequently find myself worrying about its business model. To me, Meetup is close to being the holy grail: an independent company, an excellent web client with no need to install an app, and it's not integrated with the corporate social platforms. I so want them to continue to prosper.
We have them around here.
I stopped going, because the “circle of avoidance” around me makes me self-conscious.
The ageism in New York, is even worse than in Silicon Valley.
I don't have that kind of gathering on side. There are no programming meetups. It's an industrial area. My job mostly involves programming equipment operation using WinForm and WPF. I sometimes wish there were such meetups too. Around here, it's all factories