Ironically, I go to a small Liberal Arts college. I think my experiences can happen anywhere. It's tough being a kid these days, making friends, and more importantly, keeping friends.

I appreciate your comments, as well as everyone else's, very much! Thank you.

Yeah, especially if you don't drink alcohol. I've heard that around 24/25 is when people get over the novelty of it and start not caring about it as much. Maybe you can move to a country where nobody drinks. I can't think of one that isn't islamic although :( It's sad that people need alcohol to be 'drunk' (stupid, goofy and social), it's such a crutch.

What I do is talk to random people on the street/mall/coffee shop with complete honesty that look interesting to you. Maybe even a few girls ;) Some will get nowhere, some will putter, others you'll click. People from more social cultures (latin,etc) are a lot less uptight. There's millions of people out there in your city today, a few of them have GOT to be interesting :P Or create user groups or meetup groups or whatever your interested in and advertise! And organize, and initiate. And keep on going and going an going. When your the one who starts it, your the one with the ultimate choice.

And to be honest, programming doesn't have to be an anti-social job. There's a lot of ranting and raving with your fellow co-workers ;) It's like saying film-making is anti-social because you have to sit infront of a terminal editing video, thinking up scripts and creating sets.

I don't think it is or has to be either. But when I was "learning to become a programmer," I just found myself becoming increasingly disconnected from the world. It was as if I was constantly thinking about programming, etc. and I didn't want to be bothered.

Just because everyone else is drunk doesn't mean you have to be too.

Granted if you are sober, a really drunk person can be a pain. However, drunk people don't know you are sober, so you can banter away with them sober or not, but its difficult if you are shy I admit. Its 'just' a matter of putting yourself out there and doing it.

Other good places to meet people is at the gym - take circuits classes, join a sports club of some sort (tennis, biking, swimming, rock climbing ...).

I am pretty shy naturally, but I have met a ton of people at the swimming pool and on nights out (but I do drink a bit too much beer!).

I've had access to alcohol since I was really small, but I never saw much in it. When I got to US to go to college, everyone was crazy about alcohol...it was really weird. To me, it was like seeing adults go to chuck e cheese every day.

I hear ya. I don't drink either.

I would love it if there were a college specific channel for users. It would be easy to know who else is part of the community at one's college--and maybe meet with them.

While I appreciate the connection with people in a similar situation as myself, I think one of the major advantages of HN, and the hacker community as a whole, is that completely pervasive respect of one another. This community exists almost entirely outside of bias, and I think the first step towards reversing that is willingly dividing people based on their situation. I wouldn't want to risk the benefit of being able to communicate with folks in this forum as peers, I think it's really important to the culture.