Recurse Center Return Statement

What’s the Recurse Center?

The Recurse Center is a community of smart, nice, thoughtful programmers of all experience levels, that you can join by applying to do a six-, or 12-week self-directed retreat in NYC. People spend their time at RC working on personal projects, exploring new areas of programming, contributing to open source software, or anything else they’re interested in.

RC focuses on three self-directives,

• Work at the edge of your abilities
• Build your volitional muscles
• Learn generously

Along with four social rules

• No well-actually’s
• No feigned surprise
• No backseat driving
• No subtle -isms

In addition to the retreat, RC works with over 150 partner companies to help Recursers find programming jobs. The jobs team can help review your resume, set you up with mock interviews, and give you advice about where you might fit in best.

Why did I join RC?

I joined RC for the Summer 1 2025 batch to spend my summer break. I’d known about the Recurse Center for a few years from reading various people’s blogs0 1 2 that mentioned it in their footers.

I wanted to attend RC because I want to be motivated by and surrounded with other like-minded, passionate programmers. Most importantly, I wanted to be a part of a wider community full of these like-minded, passionate people with their own areas of experience, and nuances that I learn from.

My time at RC

Throughout my time at the Recurse Center, I spent most of my time talking and pairing on projects, however I also got a few things of my own done! Below are some of those.

• Package/Fix various packages on nixpkgs
• Paired with Will on a microcontroller that bitbanged a HID Prox card signal to simulate a real HID Prox card. I learned so much about how RFID technology works as well as using various tools like a oscilloscope and a logic analyzer.
• Started various embedded projects featuring nix flakes and esp32-idf with embassy
• Custom tmux visual bell
• Gotten more rigorous at programming, less handwaving things around

These projects are just the tangible outputs of my growth from RC. It’s been a few weeks since the end of my RC batch, but I am still trying to internalize how inspired RC made me feel. I enjoyed computers so much more there. It was refreshing to be in a space where everyone else is as passionate about computers as me, surrounded by people who are happy to create art with computers. Coming out of RC, one of the big takeaways I had was that you can just create things on your own terms. It doesn’t have to make your resume better. It doesn’t have to create value for shareholders. You can just make things for the sake of it.

At the Recurse Center, we had weekly internal talks where recursors can sign up to give a 5-minute presentation. These presentations ranged from projects that recursors have completed, to things recursors have just started and is looking for feedback, or just a 5 minute technical rant. These presentations are a very nice way for us to show off what we’re working on to other recursors, in a low-stress, welcoming environment. It is an extremely good way to keep yourself accountable when you have a presentation deadline. However if you have a project that you’d like to take longer than 5 minutes to present, we also have in-depth presentations that allots for more time.

One of my favorite, long-running RC tradition is the weekly non-programming talks. Non-programming talks have ranged from someone’s journey to Antarctica as a scientist, all the way to lockpicking. It is a great way for us as programmers to gain exposure to other cool things that our world has to offer. It is also something that even as an alum, an event that I still try to attend every week.

Every week, I try to go out on some outings with my batch in NYC every week, whether it is another tech meetup like wordhack, NYCResistor, or non-technical outings such as getting lunch, dinner together, to visiting the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

RC also opens up its doors to the public for some events, such as Localhost. Localhost is a series of monthly technical talks in NYC, given by members of the Recurse Center community.

The Lunch table at RC is a magical place, there are always people there talking about interesting things, there are always interesting serendipitous conversations that spawns there.

I’d say one of my biggest challenges coming into RC was how to manage my time. I feel like I spend most of my time talking to people, getting nerd-sniped into something everyday. That resulted in me not getting as much done as I’d hoped, but I still feel very great about it as I feel like I am growing so much as a programmer every day.

End notes

Coming out of my RC batch, I feel very refreshed. I spoke to so many people coming from all stages of their career, within and outside of computer science. I get to be surrounded by so many pleasant people in NYC every day, and attended a lot of events outside of the Recurse Center with other Recursors. I also feel more confident as a programmer, as well as being more willing to work on my own projects for fun. I am very happy that I will always be surrounded by the amazing recurse community. I still go out to local NYC events in and around NYC with recursors.

Recurse felt like a very defining moment in my technology career, I have always been driven by RC’s values of working at the edge of my abilities, learning new things, as well as sharing what I have learned with others. Recurse taught me to strengthen my volitional muscles, to learn to pick what I’d like to spend my time and effort on.

I have also integrated the recurse social rules into how I behave, I felt like the social rules made RC a especially friendly environment, and I believe abiding by these rules will make me more friendly.

I’d be happy to tell you more about my experience at RC, or answer any questions you have about applying :)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to everyone that was at my RC batch for making it one of the most memorable summer of my college years. I had a blast and I think this experience really defined the rest of my career. I felt very refreshed and I am happy I chose the field of computer science and attended RC this summer. I’d also like to thank all the RC faculty for nurturing the space and the community.

And to everyone at the Recurse Center, whether you’re an alum or in batch, Never Graduate!

(Picture of me and recursors at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, we then had amazing Italian food at Arthur Ave.)

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