Factorio Forums

I have an idea for my own mod, and I am an experienced programmer. However, I don't want to waste my time working on something that someone else already tried and found couldn't work within Factorio. Is there a good place for modders to go and discuss ideas?

You are at the right place. Post an outline of your idea in the subforum "Ideas and mod requests" and see if someone bothers to take a look.

Another approach would be to comb the forum and mod portal for keywords.

https://discord.com/invite/factorio #mod-making is also nice if you want to discuss more in real time