RecurseCenter.return()

RecurseCenter.return() 19 Aug '26 update 25 Aug '26 17 minute read Intro Part 1 of 8My 12-week experience at a programming retreat.The Recurse Center (RC for short) is a programming retreat. Sounds like a load of code-junkies, sashaying about, sharing Jupyter Notebooks and cat pics doesn’t it? Oh, it is! But wait! There’s more! RC is about people who love coding and building things, getting together to help each other learn and push their abilities. It’s a lovingly put-together programme of activities, talks and collaborative education. The physical base of RC is a building (the Hub) in Brooklyn, New York, but you can also do a retreat as a fully remote applicant. There are several 6-week batches every year, and you can apply to do just 1, or do 2 consecutively (like me) for a 12-week batch. Some people choose to do their entire batch in the hub, some are fully remote (like me), and some do hybrid. Although there are faculty who provide a calendar of activities and support, generally the work is self-directed. There are few ‘pass or fail’ situations at RC, it’s more about stretching your capabilities than ticking boxes to say ‘done’. It’s a very nourishing environment and everybody involved is kind and generous. Beyond that: you get out what you put in. How I Found RC Part 2 of 8A couple of cool articles with a certain link at the bottom.I’d not heard of RC until I was browsing Hacker News one day and saw a link to an article which I read and enjoyed, 3D printing my laptop ergonomic setup. At the bottom of the article was a little link to ‘The Recurse Center’. I clicked through. I skimmed a bit. It seemed like an interesting place but I didn’t give it much more thought at the time. I am an internet user, I don’t hang around! A few weeks later I was on HN again, reading another great article (Making niche solutions is the point) (NB I didn’t notice until writing this post that both of those articles were written by the same person, so thank you to Nicole!). This one was about how 3D printers have opened up new ways of thinking about the making process, and allow niche solutions which wouldn’t be realistic if we had to spin up assembly lines. Again, I noticed a link to this Recurse place at the bottom of the article. This time I read a bit more, clicked around a little. There seemed to be a lot about this place that would suit me. But I wasn’t sure if I was computer-sciency enough, as a self-taught coder. I wasn’t sure if I’d be a cultural fit, as a council estate chav from England. I didn’t apply. My negative thoughts got the better of me. But I did bookmark the site. A couple of evenings later I was going through some kind of thought process about my career/life situation, feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t making any moves. I remembered that Recurse place I’d read about. So I dug out the bookmark, and got to filling in my application. Why not? The Application Process Part 3 of 8"He who has begun is half done; dare to know, begin!" (Horace)I wanted to take the process seriously, to give myself a fair chance of being accepted. As soon as I decided to apply I had a mindset switch into one I might have when applying for a full-time job, or some other important consideration. I’d been self-employed for a very long time and had fallen out of practice with this kind of process, so before I’d even started the application this shift was already interesting and useful for me. The application process has 3 main steps: 1. Written application This was a bit more involved than just filling out a simple form. Apart from the usual personal details there were also questions that required more of a lengthy response in prose. This created an opportunity to be expressive and tell a story. It felt like RC wanted to start getting an idea of who I was qualitatively, not just quantitatively. I liked that. 2. Conversational interview This was a pleasant, informal Zoom call. In my case the interview (just a chat really) was with an RC alum. We had an easy conversation, a bit of a laugh and we had overlapping interests (this pattern repeated throughout RC, everybody was easy to get along with and commonality was… common). 3. Pair programming I felt a little anxious about this stage. I’d never done pair programming before. I hear so much talk of pair programming… people doing it at work, using it as part of job interviews. I wasn’t sure I’d know how to do it. Some things I’d read from RC earlier in the application process had made it clear that the pair programming wasn’t a test, that there was no need to stress about it. I gathered that it was more about finding out how I approach coding problems, and how I can communicate about them during collaboration. You can choose from several suggested ideas about what to pair on. The ideas are diverse, from Computer Science stuff to more what I’d call jobbing, everyday programming tasks. You can also suggest your own. I think the goal is just to show that you are able to write code and to communicate it and your thought processes. One of the suggestions was to make some form of Space Invaders game. I already had the beginnings of a game engine from another game I’d built, so I took the opportunity to generalise what I had and re-shape it into Space Invaders. I was paired with another lovely person, another alum who was again kind, supportive and easy to talk to. By chance, and unlike any of the other code I ever write, ever, my Space Invaders had some bugs. So we just worked through a couple of those. It was a short session and time whizzed by. Actually it was fun. The application process had been beneficial in itself. Whether I’d be accepted onto a batch or not: I’d clarified some of my thinking on things like ‘my story so far’ in terms of being a programmer, and my aims I’d had a couple of Zoom calls with (nice) strangers thousands of miles away, which was helping to normalise video calls for me I’d even done my first little bit of pair programming! Already, I’d gained from this endeavour. Even if I didn’t get invited to a batch I was still up on the deal. RC Culture Part 4 of 8How it feels to be amongst Recursers.RC really is a beautiful thing to take part in; a very social experience, with lots of like-minded people to meet. The whole project is well thought out by people who are intelligent and have good intentions. They somehow manage to choose applicants that are both brilliant but also kind and welcoming (let’s not worry about how I sneaked in!). Whoever you speak to, you know you’ll be received charitably. It’s made clear from the beginning that everybody is encouraged to message freely on Zulip, and that cold DM-ing is fine. Even this little detail is important. For some of us who tend towards over-thinking and can worry about being misunderstood, DM-ing somebody out of the blue can be fraught with ambiguity. Knowing that it was ‘accepted’ contributed to a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. I met people younger than me, and older than me. Some with more experience, some with less. Many were formally educated in Computer Science, some were self-taught like me. Some were currently in education. Some were educators themselves. I’m not sure, but I wonder if some thinking is applied to creating a mixture of people, per-batch, who are likely to have shared interests. For example on my batch there seemed to be a lot of people who were interested in visual or graphically-creative things. It may that a lot of us arty ones got thrown in together in this way on my batch… or maybe RC attracts those kinds of coders naturally. Either way, it works. Being Fully Remote Part 5 of 8Making the most of RC from a thousand miles away.I knew there might be some extra challenges with attending remotely. Time zone differences. Communicating solely via Zoom and Zulip (a messaging app a bit like Slack). During the application process somebody had given me a friendly tip: as a fully remote person I should make sure I put effort into making myself visible by messaging people on Zulip, attending events etc. People who were physically in the hub would naturally bump into each other and chat, get face-to-face time and collaborate on physical/hardware projects. None of that applies to a remote participant. As expected, I had a little, manageable, trouble with the time zone difference. Your batch is a full-time commitment and you’re expected to be there for full (at least 6 hours) days on average. The calendar events happen on New York time, which for me in the UK meant that the RC core hours started at 4pm and ended at 10pm. I’m naturally an early riser, usually up around 5am and it’s not a quick or easy task to adjust your sleep schedule. This meant I’d be doing long days. I spent the first week or so finding my footing. My daily routine In the UK during my batch we were 5 hours ahead of New York. Eventually I settled on a pattern. 07:00 - 11:15 Morning coding Work on whatever my ‘main project’ was. A good time to get in flow with something I was relatively comfortable with. 11:30 - 12:30 Body doubling While very beneficial in itself, as a daily practice this also became a useful separator between my ‘morning coding’ and my ‘RC day’. 13:00 - 15:00 Food and nap Make a point of laying down with the curtains drawn for an hour. Sometimes I’d sleep, if not I’d at least get a rest from the screen and a little body/mind relaxation. 16:00 - 22:00 Main RC day Activities from the RC calendar, coffee chat and ‘outside my comfort zone’-coding. Although I wasn’t pushed into it (there’s an understanding that people in different time zones may need to deal with things a little differently), I decided I wanted to be present until 10pm every day. I knew I was putting in the hours in the morning and getting plenty of code written, but still I wanted to aim for a ‘full RC day’ for my own discipline. I managed to stick to this commitment pretty well, and on the few occasions I bunked off early it