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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

Well. I actually do like America, I mean, which programmer would not? But during my various stays there, people have been murdered in front of my house, naked people have been thrown out of cars onto the pavement in front of me, bank roberies happened right across the street of me.

The US is the most barbaric and uncivilised of the western countries. That might come as a surprise to some.

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Okay. I am born and raised in the US and have lived here all my life. Not only have I never seen anything you described, I can't really think of a time I've even witnessed anything particularly bad happen or even had "bad things" happen to me. Not a car broken into, not a home, not luggage, no murders, not even a scream! And I'm dark and look Middle Eastern but have never faced racism (grew up in the whitest parts of the south/southwest) or even a police officer who was anything but polite. For a few months, I lived in one of the adored "utopian paradises" frequently praised on the internet, and was "randomly selected" for a bag search every single time I flew domestically.

Yes, I guess I'm fortunate, and I'm sorry bad things happened to you, and there are plenty of problems here, but, there are 330 million people in this country, most were either born abroad or their parents or grandparents were, and we all get along pretty fucking well.

Where are you staying?!? I've lived in and around NYC my whole life and never had any experiences even remotely like that. Perhaps you need to choose nicer hotels? Every country has some bad areas.

Sure, you can be unlucky and get into bad situations in every country. Strangely these things happen to me only in the US.

I would compare the feeling of safety when walking the streets of major American cities like San Francisco or Pittsburgh with the feeling of safety when walking around in Rio de Janeiro. You feel much safer in London, Paris, Berlin, or Munich.

I've been to London twice and Berlin once. For the most part I felt safe in both cities, but one night getting off the tube in London on the way back to my hotel my friends and I were verbally accosted by a bunch of locals because they overheard our American accents. Being New Yorkers, we ignored them because they were a bunch of drunks being stupid, which we're pretty used to. Still, if I had been alone, or female, it would have been a lot scarier.

I'd still go back though; that was one experience one night that could happen anywhere.

I've been to San Francisco too, but my wife and I didn't do much wandering around at night. During the day it seemed fine everyplace we went, though there was a small alley right by our hotel that was apparently used as a toilet. Again, as a New Yorker I'm pretty familiar with being around homeless people, so what I found odd was that the leakage across the sidewalk wasn't cleaned up by the city, hotel, or shopowners around the alley first thing in the morning. Instead, it was just left there for days as far as I could tell. At the time I didn't know how common that is is SF. I didn't feel unsafe by it though, except for the threat to the cleanliness of my shoes.

That small alley must have been close to downtown Turk street. I could not believe the smell in certain downtown areas of SF.

> Well. I actually do like America, I mean, which programmer would not?

? Because of being compensated relatively well? Because you can work for big tech companies? That doesn't sound enough to outweigh the negative experiences you've faced, at least for me.

I wouldn't shed any tears if programming stopped revolving around the US to such a degree.

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