Please excuse the throwaway account.

I realized a few years ago that the place where you live determines a lot of what happens in your life:

The type of people you meet, the type of sports you can do, environments you see, activities & events you can take part in, people you meet, cost of living, tax, local wages, type of housing, what kind of foods you can eat, what the weather is like, transportation systems, healthcare, internet connectivity, what language you will speak, religious activities, exposure to diseases, peacefulness / safety & stability ... and so on.

Human life also has a certain momentum to it that means you are quite likely to stay in one place or nearby it for much of your life if you settle intentionally or get stuck unintentionally. So it's a situation where if you get it right at the start, you can be happy for quite a long time, and if you get it wrong, you can be suffering for a long time. Finding somewhere just 1% 'nicer' can integrate well over the years.

I began by deliberately saving up a 'find a new home' fund for a couple of years while working normally so that I could take some time to travel freely and in a patient/relaxed way. I spent these years looking at multiple sources of information:

- International statistics & websites & thematic maps describing the basic shape of many countries - quality of life, climate, culture / attitude of people there, cost of living, tax, etc. Forums for immigrants, forums for tourists, forums for locals. Newspaper articles. Anything I could find.

- I made a shortlist of about 10-15 countries (occasionally adding/removing new ideas over the years) and used a combination of VR streetviews and real life 3-7 day trips to build an idea of the feeling of being in each country. I made a point to avoid all tourism, keep costs low, and stick to exploring widely on foot and visiting residential areas to get a taste of actual life as an immigrant. I would ask locals where they would live in the town (and country) if they had the freedom to choose, and why. I would ask immigrants how they felt about being there and if they knew of any better places (towns or countries). I kept a list of the top 5 towns or cities in each country that might suit me best and would adjust my trip following advice from local people as I travelled.

- If I found I was having a nice time and felt happy somewhere, I would wait a few weeks then go back for a second trip staying in my favourite town for 2-4 weeks, to see if I continued to like the place. This gave me a chance to exclude 'sunny weather' effects, i.e. almost anywhere can seem nice on a sunny day. Also it helped to overcome the novelty effect. New places are always fun, for a while. It's useful to ask yourself if you still feel excited about the idea of going back for another full month having just spent a week somewhere.

I won't say where I picked in the end, because the process is much more important than a particular result - and because my needs & values & preferences & language background will be different to anyone else's.

However, some places that might be interesting to begin your search with: Netherlands, Estonia, Portugal, France, Bulgaria, Romania, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Sweden, Georgia.

I have no regrets about taking a systematic and extremely patient approach over several years, utilising every possible source of information online, and always keeping an open mind (avoiding prejudices about certain parts of the world). I can see that if I had tried to solve this problem in just hours, days, weeks or months, I would have found a much less appropriate answer.

If you will be running your own business, PAY ATTENTION to business practices (laws, accounting, taxes). There are many countries where it is fantastic to be a salaried employee and you can have a generally excellent quality of life, but you might be tripped up repeatedly trying to run a business (cough Germany...).

Equally there are countries where the quality of life has certain things missing, but running a business is easy and straightforward; or the cost of living is so low that it makes a transition to running your own business viable where it otherwise wouldn't be (in particular, the cost of a local accountant to make things easy for yourself). Some countries have unique entrepreneurial tax systems like France's micro-entrepreneur system, or Estonia's 'your company only pays tax whenever you start to pay yourself anything'. Those are worth exploring. It's also worth looking for places with plenty of other coders & meetups to hang out with. (Meetup.com will give you clues).

And there are places that are just so friendly and fun that it may be worth paying whatever it costs to live there. Last of all, don't miss out on the chance to try something radically different to what you are used to. If you are from the US, consider Asia and Africa as well as Europe & Canada. You only live once.

Finally, a virtual reality headset (oculus rift or htc vive) is probably the fastest/cheapest/most effective way to explore thousands of villages, towns and cities for just a few hundred dollars total, and get an excellent idea of what it's like to be there in person.

You might find these sites useful: https://nomadlist.com and also https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/

Good luck everyone and I hope you all find somewhere nice to live.