• IEEE Computer Society
• Association for Computing Machinery
• Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

If you are a programmer and are looking for a good programmer community to join there are a lot of choices depending on what your specialties or passions are. If you are looking for something more generic to programming that deals with the industry as a whole then you really need look no further than the first two on this list. The IEEE Computer Society and the ACM are well known and respected in the programming community and joining one or both of these is an excellent idea for any programmer out there.

The third society on the list, CPSR, is more socially minded and is geared to helping programmers shape the course of the physical world as well as the virtual. All are fee based and membership gets you many benefits including a very informative newsletter. All offer student memberships at discounted rates as well and the IEEE and ACM have many different add ons that will help you get exactly what you need out of your membership.

There are other organizations out there but these are three well established and highly respected institutions that any programmer should consider joining.