Hacker News Reader

Palo Alto and Cupertino are nice.

There's not much going on in Cupertino. Palo Alto is a much nicer place to live. It's also much more expensive.

Mountain View is affordable (compared to both Cupertino and Palo Alto, but unfortunately not to the rest of San Jose) - there's a great deal of good restaurants, it's a major Caltrain station (for a trip to the city).

It also escapes most of the suburban cliches (there's independent grocery stories, fewer chain stores -- other than the Walmart/Target area near San Antonio).

It's pretty crazy how cheap San Jose is, especially over in the eastern part of town. But it's just not that exciting of a place to move to.

Mountain View is much better than Cupertino, so long as you are relatively close to Castro St. Highly recommended if you want to live in that area and don't want to pay Palo Alto prices.

I think Mountain View's one of the best values in Silicon Valley right now. Prices are reasonable, but there's a fair amount of cultural stuff that goes on downtown, and the town isn't quite as suburbany-stripmall as Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, or San Jose.

I can't recommend San Jose, especially the eastern side, unless all you do after leaving the office is sleep.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com