I lived in Midtown for a while, then bought a house in East Point and lived there for six or seven years.
It was a huge change, but mostly because of the lack of social support: it would have been as hard to move anywhere.
We also made a conscious decision to live in San Francisco (first in the Mission, now just South of there in Bernal Heights): if we'd wanted to do suburbs, we could do that just fine in Atlanta for a fraction of the price.
As I mentioned, we owned a house in East Point. We don't realistically expect to be able to buy a house in San Francisco anytime soon, possibly ever, unless we have an unexpected windfall that would take care of a huge downpayment. Then again, our rent of $3k/month (typical for two bedrooms, dogs allowed) would go pretty far in a mortgage if we did manage it.
My intuition (not based on fact) is that for a capable, experienced programmer, Atlanta has relatively high salaries, and relatively low cost of living.
Then again, we have mountains, a vast diversity of state and national parks, the ocean, beautiful views, skiing, walkable neighborhoods with corner stores, no bugs for most of the year (you can leave un-screened windows open!), etc... etc...