nicholasjbs

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!

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!)

Tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of the first day of the Recurse Center.

My cofounders and I did YC all the way back in the Summer of 2010, with the initial idea of building "OkCupid for jobs." That idea quickly fizzled, and we spent the better part of a year pivoting between other ideas that also failed.

Finally, we made something that we wanted ourselves: a self-directed programming retreat, where people built fun projects, contributed to open source, and helped each other become better programmers.

After running two small batches, we launched on HN[1] and got an incredible reception.

That post on HN helped us reach beyond our personal networks and meet programmers from around the world, many of whom have since become friends. HN brought us the majority of people who came to our next few batches, and in the years since, HN has remained our #2 source of applicants (after word of mouth).

Alas, pg's comment[2] on HN when we launched turned out to be prescient: Running free programming retreats isn't a billion-dollar business, but it's still a worthwhile thing to do, and has positively impacted over 3,000 people so far. And 15 years on I still wake up every day excited to keep working on it.

So, thanks HN, for helping make the Recurse Center possible, and for helping me find my life's work.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3435183

[2] "This sounds like a crazy plan for a startup, I realize, but this is the right sort of crazy. In fact, the way the Hackruiters think about Hacker School is a lot like the way we initially thought about YC: if it doesn't make money, it will at least have been a benevolent thing to do."

Zulip is a critical piece of software for my business: It's the main tool my company has used to communicate for more than 13 years, and it's the primary forum used by our 3,000+ person alumni community. Our Zulip realm has over 4M messages.

I share this because I hope it makes it clear that I have a vested interest in Zulip's future. And I'm happy about this news; I'm confident Zulip will continue to improve for many years.

Also, for those who don't know: Zulip was initially a for-profit startup, which was acquired by Dropbox in 2014. Tim then went to great lengths to get Dropbox to later open source it, and allow him to found a new company (the one that was today donated to the new nonprofit foundation) to continue work on Zulip. I can't think of any other cases where a founder has gone to such great lengths to do right by their users.

I've known Tim personally for over a decade. I'm certain that he's not doing this because he wants more money.

Congrats to Tim and the rest of the team!

I've been a happy Zulip user (and realm admin) for 13 years: it's one of my favorite pieces of software, and I use it daily. My understanding is these changes will be very good for Zulip's long-term stability and success.

(I'm a volunteer member of the new foundation's advisory board.)

Thank you!

Would they be easier to easier to answer without the superlative? E.g., "What's a project you're proud of?"

Thanks for the feedback!

(I'm one of the founders of the Recurse Center.)

At least so far, the impact of LLMs has been overall positive for RC. We have a big-tent community, which includes everyone from those who avoid LLMs at all costs to those who are all-in on them, and everyone in between. We have folks who come to our retreats with the explicit goal of not programming with LLMs[1] (usually because they've been using them extensively at their previous jobs) and others who use RC as an opportunity to learn how to program effectively with AI. There's also a lot of discussion here about how (and to what extent) to use LLMs effectively in the context of learning.

We wrote up our position on AI last July, and while a lot has changed since then, I think all our conclusions still hold up well[2]: "...whether you choose to embrace or avoid AI in your work at RC, you will need to build your own mental structures to grow as a programmer. When using AI, use it to amplify your ambitions, not to abdicate your agency. And regardless of what you do, be curious about and kind to the people around you."

Like everyone else, I have no idea what the future holds, but I'm confident we'll find a way to navigate it. I'm sure I have some motivated reasoning here, but I really do believe that humans will still want to understand and build things no matter how good the models get.

[1] https://miguelconner.substack.com/p/im-coding-by-hand

[2] https://www.recurse.com/blog/191-developing-our-position-on-...

If you've not seen them, the All Souls questions are really worth checking out. I've found them to be both fun and inspiring: https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/past-examination-papers

(Recurse Center cofounder here)

Most folks do RC between jobs, either because they quit their job specifically to do RC or because they lost their job and then decide to apply. Other common ways are as part of a formal sabbatical (returning either to an industry job or to academia), as part of garden leave, or while on summer break (for college and grad students). We also get a fair number of freelancers/independent contractors (who stop doing their normal work during their batches), as well as some retirees.

Some folks use RC as a way to enter the industry (both new grads and folks switching careers), though the majority of people who attend have already worked professionally as programmers.

We've had people aged 12 to early 70s attend, though most Recursers are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

All the games are custom ones built by people at the Recurse Center!

I don't think he's released the code yet, but my understanding is that he plans to!

I've had the pleasure of following Peter's progress on this project over the past 18 months or so, and it's been incredible to see how far he's taken it.

When he first described it to me, I didn't really "get" it (is it a game? a simulation? some other sort of environment?), and it wasn't until seeing an actual demo and hearing Peter explain his thinking more deeply that it clicked.

It's basically a giant simulation environment that is 1) visually stunning (and all visual aspects are meaningful / carry semantic information and aren't just glitter), 2) technically quite impressive, and 3) built for rapid exploration and experimentation. If that sounds at all interesting, you should watch the video to hear Peter's talk!

(Writing this as someone who generally doesn't like to watch videos online; this is one of the rare cases where I think it's worth it, and a video is a better format than text in explaining the thing.)

We were among the first Paper users (starting from the private beta). We loved the product for the first few years, but then it stagnated. We finally switched away from it a year and a half ago.

Their export feature has been broken for over a year. Support hasn't helped, and our data is still trapped.

A sad end for a once promising product.

Recurse Center (YC S10) | Career Facilitator / Full-Cycle Recruiter | Onsite | Brooklyn | Full-time

We operate a programming retreat with an integrated recruiting agency.

We're hiring a Career Facilitator to support our mission to transform lives by helping people direct themselves. This is a full-time, onsite role in Brooklyn with meaningful work, good benefits, great colleagues, clear goals, and a healthy culture.

We're a small, privately held business with no outside investors (except for YC, which invested ~$17k in 2010). We do not plan to raise money or go public.

Full details and how to apply in our job post: https://recurse.notion.site/Career-Facilitator-22300db231b58...

I don't agree with your characterization of my post, but I do appreciate your sharing this piece (and the fun flashback to old, oversized issues of GWS). Thanks for sharing it! Such a tragedy that Holt died shortly after he wrote that, I would have loved to hear what he thought of the last few decades of computing.

(Author here.)

This was a really fascinating project to work on because of the breadth of experiences and perspectives people have on LLMs, even when those people all otherwise have a lot in common (in this case, experienced programmers, all Recurse Center alums, all professional programmers in some capacity, almost all in the US, etc). I can't think of another area in programming where opinions differ this much.

Recurse Center (YC S10) | Career Facilitator | Onsite | Brooklyn | Full-time

We operate a programming retreat with an integrated recruiting agency.

We're hiring a Career Facilitator to support our mission to transform lives by helping people direct themselves. This is a full-time, onsite role in Brooklyn with meaningful work, good benefits, great colleagues, clear goals, and a healthy culture.

We're a small, privately held business with no outside investors (except for YC, which invested ~$17k in 2010). We do not plan to raise money or go public.

Full details and how to apply in our job post: https://recurse.notion.site/Career-Facilitator-22300db231b58...