My Recurse Center Syllabus (2021)

I attended the Recurse Center remotely for their Winter batch (Nov 2021 - Feb 2022), and the experience was terrific. The community is friendly, helpful, and empathetic. The environment and focus made me get better at programming and explore many areas in Computer Science, which I wouldn't have otherwise. I spent time hacking on SQLite, BTrees, Go Compilers, Code search engines etc. I met and paired with really amazing people. The time was very productive, and I thoroughly enjoyed my batch.

Anyone looking to get better programming, I strongly advise applying at RC.

I posted my syllabus or the daily log on my blog: https://avi.im/blag/

The recurse center is a special place. I attended Jan-Mar 2020, before yeeting myself out of NYC (because wow, what a time).

It helped re-instill my faith in creative computing and reminded me that on the other side of the text there are people on keyboards doing the thing. I spent most of my time there messing with emacs (shoutout Eric+Zach @ emacs-nyc!), collaborating, and giving small talks on things like mpd and colemak -- you really are encouraged to share whatever you want (I remember someone's tutorial about home cultivated yogurt that was really cool).

My time there helped set the "hacker spirit" tone of my sabbatical (which I took with a goal of pivoting to being a hired clojure programmer), and drove me to write and share much more, one post of which even ended up here![1]

There is a lot of communication that comes for "free" with the physical space -- I was much more active in the zulip chat after my RC batch than I ever was during my time there. They have done a good job mimicking the physical experience in a virtual setting now though, and have iterated nicely on what makes a virtual experience different than the physical.

If you're curious about attending and can take the time, would recommend! (there's no cost): https://www.recurse.com/apply

[1] https://notes.neeasade.net/color-spaces.html

"nundated" or "undated" both be disnegations of "inundated"