Recurse Center: Three months of life-changing, super-powered learning and coding

TL;DR: I’m finishing up my three months at the Recurse Center (previously known as Hacker School) and had the time of my life. Please feel free to ask me any questions if you’re even remotely interested!

Long version. Here we go.

—

I accidentally began my programming journey by doing some CSS and JQuery tutorials. I just wanted to have something change color on click.

Less than a year later, I’m learning about functors and monads in Haskell at three in the morning (shout out to Sean Lee), unable to sleep because it’s SO EXCITING. Crap. This was not the plan.

The past three months, I’ve been at the Recurse Center — a short-term intensive programming retreat in SoHo. It’s not a bootcamp — there are no teachers, no classes, and no curriculum. It’s simply a curated learning environment packed with some of the most brilliant && (not and/or!) generous people I’ve ever met.

Each day has been a freeform mix of reading/learning/coding on my own, learning from others, helping others learn, and building cool stuff. I learned and was exposed to more new things during this time than I probably would have in years by myself (if ever).

Tech-wise, I worked mostly on web-based projects, but also spent time experimenting with less-related stuff, like 3D modeling and functional programming (Elm + Haskell). Other people were building quadcopters from scratch, training neural networks, and math topics I don’t even understand enough to label.

A fun highlight that really encapsulates the amazingness of RC was when I paired with the creator of Elm to learn Elm. For five hours straight. (whaaaaattt????!!?)

In a nutshell, Recurse Center helps you become a better programmer and also helps massively with job placement after your batch, if you want. Again, it’s TOTALLY FREE. Which is already amazing.

In a more fluid food-container — a grape shell? a dumpling? — it is a life-changing community of truly incredible thinkers and creators who then become your friends and colleagues forever. (… who also happen to debug (and respond) faster than Stack Overflow.)

Plus, I’m starting to feel pretty OK about calling myself a software developer now. (Impostor syndrome is never over, but I’m working through it.)

—

If you made it to the bottom of this post, you’re either already at RC or at least somewhat interested in applying. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?

Program details + application: www.recurse.com