While I'm still waiting for the right moment in my own life to do my own Recurse Center retreat, I have had the pleasure of hiring and working with several RC alums over the years and in every instance have found them to be high-quality developers and interesting people to boot. Big congrats to RC for 15 years!
Congrats Sonali, Nick, Dave & everyone else! I had an incredible time with you all in NY more than 10 years ago, it was so cool, and I'm still thinking of it very fondly. Spent my days hacking away in the space near Canal Street and the nights and weekends exploring NYC with other Recursers, visiting museums, parks and venturing out to buy cheap dumplings by the dozen. I was quite poor back then but I enjoyed my life so much, had a tiny room at the Kolping house on the Upper East Side which was very run down and tiny but also very cheap, basically just went there for sleeping and spent every other minute in the space and outside. No distractions, no possessions beyond my laptop, no responsibilities, simple but happy times. And then in 2021 I found my dream job at DuckDuckGo through RC, been working there for almost five years now! Thanks for everything and great to see it's still going strong!
Hadn't heard of this before but its a cool idea. I often take my own little "programming retreats" and go to another city for a week and work out of a nice coworking space for a sense of focus and engagement with my work.
At first i found odd that pricing is nowhere in the website, but then i found it burried under FAQ (free!) - is it to weed out people who are focusing on free rather than going deeper into the experience?
> How much does attending the Recurse Center cost?
> RC is free for everyone. You will never receive a bill from RC.
> How can you afford to make RC free?
> RC has a built in recruiting agency. Companies pay to hire RC alumni. This payment never comes out of your salary.
Yes, we want people to be making an intentional choice to come to RC, and not just to do it because it's free, so we don't lead with that. Our hope is that people will get excited about the idea, and then be pleasantly surprised when they discover that it's completely free.
(While we don't like to lead with being free, we also don't mean to completely bury that fact -- e.g., we do have it on the front page, albeit at the very bottom. Perhaps we should make this a little more prominent. Thanks for the feedback!)
I like the definition of social rules [0]. I also wonder whether the roof rule was written preemptively or retrospectively -- I hope the former.
I have my own thanks to give to HN. It's connected me to interesting people, online and IRL. It's led to some very strong friendships. It's led me to multiple job opportunities, and usually the better ones. It's changing of course, but I've had a great time in this community so far, and that deserves thanks.
> I also wonder whether the roof rule was written preemptively or retrospectively -- I hope the former.
Presume you're referring to [1], not the page you linked, and one might be inclined to accuse you of __feigning surprise__ but if not: using the roof is a quite common expectation in mid-rise buildings in big cities like NY, though not usually in a building you don't yourself own/lease in.
I had the chance to work with a bunch of Recurse alumni over the past 4 years, they have all been amazing, brilliant engineers and overall great people :)
Ah! I so wanted to go to the recurse center when I was between jobs, but I was too nervous to push my start date back a significant amount. I really hope I can do it one day. It sounds so awesome!
I wish something like Recurse existed in Cupertino, I've always admired the program. Congrats on this milestone, most HN alumni don't make it past a decade.
I attended a Recurse Center batch, and while I understand that others had amazing experiences, mine was quite bland.
I can't blame anyone but myself for this.
Most of the other attendees were intelligent or highly self-motivated, or both. Many people seemed to connect instantly, forming small work groups, sharing project ideas, and even going out for lunch or dinner together. They were constantly talking about how awesome Zulip was (is?) [*] and engaged in a constant stick-measuring contest to see whose weekly project would make it to Hacker News’ top 30. At times, it felt like I had joined some sort of mini-cult. I know it wasn’t like that at all; it was just the visuals from an outsider in a completely different culture. As far as I can remember, people were very friendly, willing to help others whenever they were stuck, and happy to study and tackle challenging problems together. There were lots of learnings floating around the working space. Sadly, it didn’t work for me at all, and years later, I still don’t know why exactly.
Perhaps it was the fast pace of New York City and SoHo itself? Or the rudeness of passersby, especially the police officers who couldn’t be bothered even if I just wanted to ask for directions? Or the dirtiness of the streets? The constant noise from cars honking all the time? The strange people in the Subway? The ubiquitous unhealthy food at every corner? Healthy food was difficult to find, at least for someone new to the city, and when accessible, it was unaffordable. Multiple times, I found myself working in the Recurse Center workspace with an empty stomach, which obviously exacerbated the bad experiences, but I can’t even complain about that because they often had free pizza (once, twice a week?) but obviously, pizza is unhealthy, so I never accepted.
Overall, I had a very bad experience, but I believe nothing was Recurse Center’s fault; it was mine. I’m not entirely sure what I expected when I joined, but I hope this serves as a warning to future attendees to prepare themselves before joining, especially if you are not familiar with American culture, and particularly with New York.
[*] https://zulip.com(years later, I still don’t understand why people love Zulip so much)
New York is... New York. I've spent a lot of time there, and even lived there for a summer. I was at a board meeting down there recently and a new ex officio member basically asked "How do people deal with the confusion?" It is what it is. And it used to be worse.
I'm not sure who you are, but I'm sorry that RC was a bad experience for you. I appreciate your sharing your experience so respectfully, and I hope you've since found other communities or opportunities that are better a better fit for you!
I respect your opinion and experience, but FWIW for the readers, I had the completely opposite experience.
The batch did divide into groups. Some people were learning functional programming, others focused on Transformers architecture, while yet others on dynamic programming. But I quickly found a small group of people who were building things that I was interested in, games and AI applications.
In the unstructured time I was able to set my own goals, ship a lot, write a lot, and give a lot of talks on topics that are very interesting to me.
I didn't expect or get any free food from the Recurse Centre -- I was in New York, I had the world's cuisines available to me. I often went on lunch along with other RC members to reasonably affordable places within walking distance.
RC is not a college course with exams and a fixed syllabus -- It was unstructured and self-directed -- and that's what made it so special.
I know one or two other people who have similar feelings to you (bland experience, wish they had connected more with the people). That is why in my advice for people considering Recurse Center (https://jcmorrow.com/recurse/) I encourage people not to come in too attached to a project.
The competitors to Zulip are Slack and Discord, maybe Matrix/IRC. The question is how do you group subjects and sub-subjects aka threading and Zulip forces the user to pick both explicitly. This results in an easier to follow conversation. Eg in the 3d printing channel there's a modeling thread and a filament thread, so if you want to see stuff about filaments, you don't see the conversation about modeling unless you specifically go over to that thread. Meanwhile, Slack's threads are part of the channel, so you can go into a channel, post a message, and half the conversation is in the channel itself, and half the conversation is in a thread. So you're forced to read all of slack to keep up with the conversation. At the end of the day, it's about signal to noise, and Zulip's UX raises signal.
Never heard of recurse before but what a charming idea. Seems like you've found something amazing to do in life. Wholesome posts like OP are much welcome in tech. Updooted.
While I'm still waiting for the right moment in my own life to do my own Recurse Center retreat, I have had the pleasure of hiring and working with several RC alums over the years and in every instance have found them to be high-quality developers and interesting people to boot. Big congrats to RC for 15 years!
Congrats Sonali, Nick, Dave & everyone else! I had an incredible time with you all in NY more than 10 years ago, it was so cool, and I'm still thinking of it very fondly. Spent my days hacking away in the space near Canal Street and the nights and weekends exploring NYC with other Recursers, visiting museums, parks and venturing out to buy cheap dumplings by the dozen. I was quite poor back then but I enjoyed my life so much, had a tiny room at the Kolping house on the Upper East Side which was very run down and tiny but also very cheap, basically just went there for sleeping and spent every other minute in the space and outside. No distractions, no possessions beyond my laptop, no responsibilities, simple but happy times. And then in 2021 I found my dream job at DuckDuckGo through RC, been working there for almost five years now! Thanks for everything and great to see it's still going strong!
Hadn't heard of this before but its a cool idea. I often take my own little "programming retreats" and go to another city for a week and work out of a nice coworking space for a sense of focus and engagement with my work.
At first i found odd that pricing is nowhere in the website, but then i found it burried under FAQ (free!) - is it to weed out people who are focusing on free rather than going deeper into the experience?
> How much does attending the Recurse Center cost? > RC is free for everyone. You will never receive a bill from RC.
> How can you afford to make RC free? > RC has a built in recruiting agency. Companies pay to hire RC alumni. This payment never comes out of your salary.
Yes, we want people to be making an intentional choice to come to RC, and not just to do it because it's free, so we don't lead with that. Our hope is that people will get excited about the idea, and then be pleasantly surprised when they discover that it's completely free.
(While we don't like to lead with being free, we also don't mean to completely bury that fact -- e.g., we do have it on the front page, albeit at the very bottom. Perhaps we should make this a little more prominent. Thanks for the feedback!)
I like the definition of social rules [0]. I also wonder whether the roof rule was written preemptively or retrospectively -- I hope the former.
I have my own thanks to give to HN. It's connected me to interesting people, online and IRL. It's led to some very strong friendships. It's led me to multiple job opportunities, and usually the better ones. It's changing of course, but I've had a great time in this community so far, and that deserves thanks.
0: https://www.recurse.com/social-rules
> I also wonder whether the roof rule was written preemptively or retrospectively -- I hope the former.
Presume you're referring to [1], not the page you linked, and one might be inclined to accuse you of __feigning surprise__ but if not: using the roof is a quite common expectation in mid-rise buildings in big cities like NY, though not usually in a building you don't yourself own/lease in.
1. https://www.recurse.com/code-of-conduct
How did you connect with people from hn and made irl friendships with them?
You guys changed many lives including my own.
Thanks for making Recurse so awesome Nick, and it was great running into you at demo day.
I learned so much and made great friends at my six weeks in Brooklyn.
Without Recurse Center I probably wouldn't have made it into YC with a startup of my own today. Long live RC!
I had the chance to work with a bunch of Recurse alumni over the past 4 years, they have all been amazing, brilliant engineers and overall great people :)
Ah! I so wanted to go to the recurse center when I was between jobs, but I was too nervous to push my start date back a significant amount. I really hope I can do it one day. It sounds so awesome!
I wish something like Recurse existed in Cupertino, I've always admired the program. Congrats on this milestone, most HN alumni don't make it past a decade.
It's very far from the same thing, but there's Hacker Dojo in Mountain View if you're looking for people irl to meet up with.
Some of the best engineers I worked at got their start in programming at the recurse center... thank you for the good you've done in this world!
Thanks RC! I went back when it was Hacker School! Grateful that period of my life - grew so much!
RC is a great community and I will be forever grateful to them for introducing me to several good friends that are still in my life 10 years later.
Congratulations! From time to time I visit your website and consider applying when between jobs but never did. Might try this year :)
HN wouldn’t be HN without Dang. Thank you Dang.
I attended a Recurse Center batch, and while I understand that others had amazing experiences, mine was quite bland.
I can't blame anyone but myself for this.
Most of the other attendees were intelligent or highly self-motivated, or both. Many people seemed to connect instantly, forming small work groups, sharing project ideas, and even going out for lunch or dinner together. They were constantly talking about how awesome Zulip was (is?) [*] and engaged in a constant stick-measuring contest to see whose weekly project would make it to Hacker News’ top 30. At times, it felt like I had joined some sort of mini-cult. I know it wasn’t like that at all; it was just the visuals from an outsider in a completely different culture. As far as I can remember, people were very friendly, willing to help others whenever they were stuck, and happy to study and tackle challenging problems together. There were lots of learnings floating around the working space. Sadly, it didn’t work for me at all, and years later, I still don’t know why exactly.
Perhaps it was the fast pace of New York City and SoHo itself? Or the rudeness of passersby, especially the police officers who couldn’t be bothered even if I just wanted to ask for directions? Or the dirtiness of the streets? The constant noise from cars honking all the time? The strange people in the Subway? The ubiquitous unhealthy food at every corner? Healthy food was difficult to find, at least for someone new to the city, and when accessible, it was unaffordable. Multiple times, I found myself working in the Recurse Center workspace with an empty stomach, which obviously exacerbated the bad experiences, but I can’t even complain about that because they often had free pizza (once, twice a week?) but obviously, pizza is unhealthy, so I never accepted.
Overall, I had a very bad experience, but I believe nothing was Recurse Center’s fault; it was mine. I’m not entirely sure what I expected when I joined, but I hope this serves as a warning to future attendees to prepare themselves before joining, especially if you are not familiar with American culture, and particularly with New York.
[*] https://zulip.com (years later, I still don’t understand why people love Zulip so much)
New York is... New York. I've spent a lot of time there, and even lived there for a summer. I was at a board meeting down there recently and a new ex officio member basically asked "How do people deal with the confusion?" It is what it is. And it used to be worse.
I'm not sure who you are, but I'm sorry that RC was a bad experience for you. I appreciate your sharing your experience so respectfully, and I hope you've since found other communities or opportunities that are better a better fit for you!
I respect your opinion and experience, but FWIW for the readers, I had the completely opposite experience.
The batch did divide into groups. Some people were learning functional programming, others focused on Transformers architecture, while yet others on dynamic programming. But I quickly found a small group of people who were building things that I was interested in, games and AI applications.
In the unstructured time I was able to set my own goals, ship a lot, write a lot, and give a lot of talks on topics that are very interesting to me.
I didn't expect or get any free food from the Recurse Centre -- I was in New York, I had the world's cuisines available to me. I often went on lunch along with other RC members to reasonably affordable places within walking distance.
RC is not a college course with exams and a fixed syllabus -- It was unstructured and self-directed -- and that's what made it so special.
I know one or two other people who have similar feelings to you (bland experience, wish they had connected more with the people). That is why in my advice for people considering Recurse Center (https://jcmorrow.com/recurse/) I encourage people not to come in too attached to a project.
The competitors to Zulip are Slack and Discord, maybe Matrix/IRC. The question is how do you group subjects and sub-subjects aka threading and Zulip forces the user to pick both explicitly. This results in an easier to follow conversation. Eg in the 3d printing channel there's a modeling thread and a filament thread, so if you want to see stuff about filaments, you don't see the conversation about modeling unless you specifically go over to that thread. Meanwhile, Slack's threads are part of the channel, so you can go into a channel, post a message, and half the conversation is in the channel itself, and half the conversation is in a thread. So you're forced to read all of slack to keep up with the conversation. At the end of the day, it's about signal to noise, and Zulip's UX raises signal.
Awesome story, thanks for sharing!
Congrats, helping people improve their lives and for their loved ones has its own return.
Never heard of recurse before but what a charming idea. Seems like you've found something amazing to do in life. Wholesome posts like OP are much welcome in tech. Updooted.