There are two world-class professional societies for programmers: the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) [1] and the IEEE Computer Society. [2] We recommend that all programmers belong to one (or both) of these societies. In addition, developers outside the United States may want to join their national societies, such as the BCS in the United Kingdom.
[1] ACM Member Services, PO Box 11414, New York, NY 10286, USA.
www.acm.org
[2] 1730 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036-1992, USA.
www.computer.org
Membership in a professional society has many benefits. The conferences and local meetings give you great opportunities to meet people with similar interests, and the special interest groups and technical committees give you the opportunity to participate in setting standards and guidelines used around the world. You'll also get a lot out of their publications , from high-level discussions of industry practice to low-level computing theory.