Ask HN: What are some good cities to live in while hacking on a project? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some good cities to live in while hacking on a project?

2 pointswhitepoplar5 comments

I'm a 29yo single guy, and would prefer not to spend a princely sum of money on rent. I value walkability/public transit, the ability to meet interesting people, and good transit to/from. I'm from the US, but would consider any city worldwide. Which cities would you recommend and why? Thanks in advance! :-)

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Vienna, Austria. Why? Because it's rather cheap (in comparison to other european capitals), according to expats it's the city with the greatest quality of life worldwide and it would be easy to get a dev job, if you need one.

I love Vienna. Would the language barrier be a problem for a non-German speaker? I have no hesitation to learn a different language, though I'd be starting from scratch. How would you compare Vienna to someplace like Berlin?

You don't need to learn German necessarily, I know quite a lot of people there that don't speak German. I was never in Berlin, but my guess is that it is better for developers (Vienna has no startup culture) but at the cost of quality of life.

This year I travelled for a few months working, here is the summary of every city I've been:

- Barcelona: Pricy, very modern, cool people, lots of events and things to do.

- Canary Islands (Las palmas gran Canaria / Santa Cruz Tenerife): Cheaper than Barcelona, cool people, fewer events but you can surf, dive and hike all in the same day. Don't know how English friendly it is since I also speak Spanish but there is a lot of ex-pat/tourist all year long.

- Zagreb: Average to cheap, nice city. I dint socialize a lot since I was working like mad at this time. People may be more distant than other places but nothing crazy you can still make friends. Reality English-friendly. Best public transportation of any Balkan city I've been.

- Sarajevo: Pretty cheap, don't even think about going here in winter unless you like -20 degrees Celcius. Small city, bad infrastructure but still nice, really walkable. If you go here go to the coworking HUB387 and tell them Elian from Argentina send you haha. In that coworking, I met so many people, the main reason why I would go back.

- Belgrade: Pretty cheap, nice city, like Sarajevo but bigger and with more stuff to do. Again don't even think of going here in winter. Good nightlife and hot girls (same in all Balkan countries)

Sofia: Pretty cheap, boring in my opinion. There are some things to do like, it has many huge parks, trampoline park rock climbing places, and some other stuff, maybe stay here for a few days, more than that.

- Istanbul: Really cheap (Kebab + chips + small coke = 1 to 1.5 USD, if you know were to look for), summer is pretty hot. People are good but some of them may try to trick you to sell something more expensive, but it's not a huge deal. Pretty safe also. Nice because it's pretty different, also you can meet a lot of people from some very strict Islamic countries (Marrocco/Irak/Iran) and talking to them and listening to their lack of freedom and stuff will make you appreciate a lot more your country. Prepare to walk a lot and with lots of ups and downs. It's very noisy and chaotic, personally would not like to live here but it still pretty nice. Not so English friendly, less than the other places I mentioned.

- Berlin: Expensive, still my favourite place, a million things to do, millions of historical thing happen there, people from all over the world, international events/conferences. Expensive but really really REALLY good and reliable public transport. Very English friendly, also bike-friendly.

- Dresden: Expensive, nice to see a more german city, since there are not so many immigrants/ex-pat. Do be scared of the news about nazi emergency or right-wing extremist, the media its been pretty alarmistic. The most bike-friendly city I've been to.

Hope you find it useful!

Thank you so much for this! :-)

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