If you want to make lifelong friends and spend countless hours programming and working together in all sorts of things, for fun and/or profit, go to University. I went and started https://makersupv.com/ with some friends, which could only happen within university-life context.

The synergy of having hundreds of like-minded people working towards similar goals but each with a different specialization/interest, all while having energy and free time, is difficult to undermine.