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I moved from DC to Chicago and I love it here. I don't know where Thiel is getting his data but there are a lot of talented ambitious people in Chicago doing a

I moved from DC to Chicago and I love it here. I don't know where Thiel is getting his data but there are a lot of talented ambitious people in Chicago doing amazing things. To me going to New York or Silicon Valley is akin to the goldrush. Their is a lot of competition, nowhere to live, and lots of sheisty people that want to rob you or make you work for free for them. Thanks but no thanks. Chicago has contributed immensely to the tech world. For example, Ruby on Rails was built by engineers from Chicago based company. And I know for fact there are a lot of rails apps powering Silicon Valley and NY. I guess my point is that there are smart engineers everywhere and its more up to your own individual drive how far you go. Good thing about Chicago is that's it cleaner and cheaper than San Fran or NY so I'll take my chances.

blazespin 10y ago
San Francisco is a pit, go south into the Bay Area. Much Better. I pick my locales by homicide rates. Chicago and Sf both suck.
- CalChris 10y ago
  San Francisco was 45 homicides per 100,000 for 2014. San Jose was 32. Kansas City was 78. Denver was 31. Dallas was 116. These were picked kinda randomly.
  - ohhnoodont 10y ago
    I think you're reading your numbers wrong - San Francisco had 5.3 murders per 100,000 people in 2014 (45 in total [1]). [1] http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-California.html http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californi...
    - CalChris 10y ago
      Doh. Thank you.
  - toomanybeersies 10y ago
    Are you sure that isn't per million? Because Wikipedia says that the rate for the USA as a whole is 3.9/100,000
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  If you pick your locales by homicide rate, you should perhaps consider emigrating.
- hermitdev 10y ago
  Areas of Chicago suck. The majority of Chicago is great, and generally very safe. (It also doesn't reek of garbage and urine like Manhattan). You're pretty safe, maybe safer than national metropolitan cities in Chicago if you don't go to certain areas, such as the generalized west and south sides. Even then, the violence is even more localized than those generalizations. Yes, homicides in the city limit are the worst in the US. Work in the loop? Probably will never have a problem (I think homicides in the Loop are like 1% or less of the city total). Last I can think of that wasn't at a festival in Grant Park was a murder/suicide where a white-collar employee shot his boss then offed his self a few years back). I worked in the Loop between 2004 and February of this year and I never had a single time where I even felt threatened. I never even got mugged, even while stumbling obviously drunk to the Metra. The Loop is very heavily patrolled. The real homicide problems are in the very poor neighborhoods on the west and south sides well away from the financial district/Loop. Gentrification in the last 15-20 years has pushed those neighborhoods even further away from the Loop. In short, homicide's not the big problem it seems in Chicago (yes, it's a problem - but not a city-wide problem - it's a neighborhood issue).
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Homicides in Chicago are not "the worst in the US". We should be more numerate than this. Chicago has a lot of murders --- it's fair to point this out in comparing cities, because the city management needs to be accountable for the human rights catastrophe occurring on the south and west sides. But the number that matters experientially is the per capita rate, and on that scale, Chicago proper doesn't even rank in the top 20. It's a huge city, more than 3x larger than SF.
    - areyousure 10y ago
      The Brennan center projection for Chicago's 2016 per capita rate is 26.6 per 100,000 people per year. I believe that is well within the top 20. Do you reason differently? My understanding is that you live in Chicago.
      - tptacek 10y ago
reflexive 10y ago
> Ruby on Rails was built by engineers from Chicago Interesting, but do you have any examples of positive contributions to the tech world?
- mcpherrinm 10y ago
  Please take your bad attitude elsewhere.
mbesto 10y ago
> Ruby on Rails was built by engineers from Chicago based company Sorry to be pedantic, but... First, RoR has a BDFL based in Chicago (originally from DK), but is an open source project built and maintained from people all over the world. Second, the amount of wealth created by companies in NYC/SV leveraging RoR is easily in the billions (not real math, but back of the napkin). The reality is that this isn't a black/white issue, but one with a whole lot of grey area and a VC speaking hyperbolically in an attempt to executing content marketing[0]. Let's move along and let the market dictate the reality, shall we? [0] - http://avc.com/2016/08/understanding-vcs/ http://avc.com/2016/08/understanding-vcs/
- dkuntz2 10y ago
  To be even more pedantic, but ... The original version of Ruby on Rails was pulled from Basecamp. The work was originally for Basecamp, and done by engineers working on Basecamp. While at this point in its life Rails is no longer mainly developed and organized by people in Chicago, it definitely was built by engineers from a Chicago-based company. And, DHH has at times been pretty explicit that Rails still takes cues from Basecamp's needs from a framework.
  - mbesto 10y ago
    > While at this point in its life Rails is no longer mainly developed and organized by people in Chicago, it definitely was built by engineers from a Chicago-based company. But it wasn't even originally developed by people in Chicago. That's my point. After graduating from the Copenhagen Business School and receiving his bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Business Administration, Hansson moved from Denmark to Chicago, Illinois, U.S. in November 2005.[0] The first commit for rails was November 2004: https://github.com/rails/rails/graphs/contributors?from=2004-11-21&to=2005-06-20&type=c https://github.com/rails/rails/graphs/contributors?from=2004... All other commits in the first year were from people in Utah, Arizona, Chicago and New Zealand. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson
gogopuppygogo 10y ago
Chicago has some good stuff going on! Been in the scene since 2008 so I've seen the whole change happen. http://www.technori.com http://www.technori.com - is older than 1871 and much more community oriented. http://hf.cx http://hf.cx - is opening a Chicago CO-OP here. We have some great tech groups: http://chipy.org http://chipy.org http://www.chicagotechslack.com/ http://www.chicagotechslack.com/ http://womentechfounders.com/ http://womentechfounders.com/
avyfain 10y ago
> Ruby on Rails was built by engineers from Chicago Interestingly, Django also started in the midwest. Starting in Kansas[0] and then growing up in Chicago. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130301193540/http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter01.html#django-s-history https://web.archive.org/web/20130301193540/http://www.django...

blazespin 10y ago

San Francisco is a pit, go south into the Bay Area. Much Better. I pick my locales by homicide rates. Chicago and Sf both suck.

CalChris 10y ago
San Francisco was 45 homicides per 100,000 for 2014. San Jose was 32. Kansas City was 78. Denver was 31. Dallas was 116. These were picked kinda randomly.
- ohhnoodont 10y ago
  I think you're reading your numbers wrong - San Francisco had 5.3 murders per 100,000 people in 2014 (45 in total [1]). [1] http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-California.html http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californi...
  - CalChris 10y ago
    Doh. Thank you.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  Are you sure that isn't per million? Because Wikipedia says that the rate for the USA as a whole is 3.9/100,000
toomanybeersies 10y ago
If you pick your locales by homicide rate, you should perhaps consider emigrating.
hermitdev 10y ago
Areas of Chicago suck. The majority of Chicago is great, and generally very safe. (It also doesn't reek of garbage and urine like Manhattan). You're pretty safe, maybe safer than national metropolitan cities in Chicago if you don't go to certain areas, such as the generalized west and south sides. Even then, the violence is even more localized than those generalizations. Yes, homicides in the city limit are the worst in the US. Work in the loop? Probably will never have a problem (I think homicides in the Loop are like 1% or less of the city total). Last I can think of that wasn't at a festival in Grant Park was a murder/suicide where a white-collar employee shot his boss then offed his self a few years back). I worked in the Loop between 2004 and February of this year and I never had a single time where I even felt threatened. I never even got mugged, even while stumbling obviously drunk to the Metra. The Loop is very heavily patrolled. The real homicide problems are in the very poor neighborhoods on the west and south sides well away from the financial district/Loop. Gentrification in the last 15-20 years has pushed those neighborhoods even further away from the Loop. In short, homicide's not the big problem it seems in Chicago (yes, it's a problem - but not a city-wide problem - it's a neighborhood issue).
- tptacek 10y ago
  Homicides in Chicago are not "the worst in the US". We should be more numerate than this. Chicago has a lot of murders --- it's fair to point this out in comparing cities, because the city management needs to be accountable for the human rights catastrophe occurring on the south and west sides. But the number that matters experientially is the per capita rate, and on that scale, Chicago proper doesn't even rank in the top 20. It's a huge city, more than 3x larger than SF.
  - areyousure 10y ago
    The Brennan center projection for Chicago's 2016 per capita rate is 26.6 per 100,000 people per year. I believe that is well within the top 20. Do you reason differently? My understanding is that you live in Chicago.
    - tptacek 10y ago

reflexive 10y ago

> Ruby on Rails was built by engineers from Chicago Interesting, but do you have any examples of positive contributions to the tech world?

mcpherrinm 10y ago
Please take your bad attitude elsewhere.

mbesto 10y ago

> Ruby on Rails was built by engineers from Chicago based company Sorry to be pedantic, but... First, RoR has a BDFL based in Chicago (originally from DK), but is an open source project built and maintained from people all over the world. Second, the amount of wealth created by companies in NYC/SV leveraging RoR is easily in the billions (not real math, but back of the napkin). The reality is that this isn't a black/white issue, but one with a whole lot of grey area and a VC speaking hyperbolically in an attempt to executing content marketing[0]. Let's move along and let the market dictate the reality, shall we? [0] - http://avc.com/2016/08/understanding-vcs/ http://avc.com/2016/08/understanding-vcs/

dkuntz2 10y ago
To be even more pedantic, but ... The original version of Ruby on Rails was pulled from Basecamp. The work was originally for Basecamp, and done by engineers working on Basecamp. While at this point in its life Rails is no longer mainly developed and organized by people in Chicago, it definitely was built by engineers from a Chicago-based company. And, DHH has at times been pretty explicit that Rails still takes cues from Basecamp's needs from a framework.
- mbesto 10y ago
  > While at this point in its life Rails is no longer mainly developed and organized by people in Chicago, it definitely was built by engineers from a Chicago-based company. But it wasn't even originally developed by people in Chicago. That's my point. After graduating from the Copenhagen Business School and receiving his bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Business Administration, Hansson moved from Denmark to Chicago, Illinois, U.S. in November 2005.[0] The first commit for rails was November 2004: https://github.com/rails/rails/graphs/contributors?from=2004-11-21&to=2005-06-20&type=c https://github.com/rails/rails/graphs/contributors?from=2004... All other commits in the first year were from people in Utah, Arizona, Chicago and New Zealand. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson

gogopuppygogo 10y ago

Chicago has some good stuff going on! Been in the scene since 2008 so I've seen the whole change happen. http://www.technori.com http://www.technori.com - is older than 1871 and much more community oriented. http://hf.cx http://hf.cx - is opening a Chicago CO-OP here. We have some great tech groups: http://chipy.org http://chipy.org http://www.chicagotechslack.com/ http://www.chicagotechslack.com/ http://womentechfounders.com/ http://womentechfounders.com/

avyfain 10y ago

> Ruby on Rails was built by engineers from Chicago Interestingly, Django also started in the midwest. Starting in Kansas[0] and then growing up in Chicago. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130301193540/http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter01.html#django-s-history https://web.archive.org/web/20130301193540/http://www.django...