Being a Resident at the Recurse Center | Hacker News Reader

Being a Resident at the Recurse Center

marijnhaverbeke.nl

46 pointsluu9 comments

Tweaked the structure of a functional-style space invaders game to be cleaner and more actually functional. Major insight: moving triggers for sound effects from deep inside the game logic to a separate piece of code that compared the state before and after the frame, and played the appropriate sounds based on that.

Question for the functional programming pros here: would you rather build it this way, or with a writer monad? The writer monad seems like less code overall, and keeps the side effect generation code near the code which generates the sound.

I do Haskell as my job. In general I would much rather have a function in the vein of `DeltaState -> [SoundEffects]` than another layer of effects. If the sounds aren't dependent on by what means the state changed, but only on what the change in state is, then you may as well factor out the sound logic. Conversely, since I want to keep the program well factored I endeavor to separate concerns into pure computations as much as possible and minimize effects.

I know quite a few recursers and they're all lovely people and talented programmers. Once I can arrange for a months-long gap in my work life I plan to apply.

Not sure if the author of the blog post is around but I am curious how you applied for the week long stint. I approached these guys (prior to the name change I think) and didn't get a clear answer for how one gets into the short-term residency program (my memory is fuzzy but I seem to recall they said it was invite-only at that time).

Wish there was something like this in the Bay area. We have cool communities like Hacker Dojo and meetups, but I quite like the idea of taking a week or two off from work and getting deeper into technical topics alongside other experienced developers.

(RC cofounder here.)

Sorry to hear our previous answer wasn't clear. Yes, residencies are an invite-only thing, however, everyone is welcome to apply to attend RC :)

We recently updated our User's Manual (see: https://www.recurse.com/manual#sec-residents) with more info about residents, including what we look for and that they're selected via invitation (typically after being suggested by current members of our community).

I hope this helps!

It's recur, not recurse. Would you incurse during an incursion?

https://www.recurse.com/

My functions recurse, they do not recur. I have only heard 'recurse' in this context, and it's not an uncommon colloquialism. It's at least common enough to be noted by the OED.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng...

...Is like being a resident at the Recurse Center.

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