RC Minimax
How does one actualize years of pent-up anticipation into a single week of Recurse Center?
Set intentions
Set goals for the week
(My goals)
- Feel excited about computers again.
- Connect with a lot of self-directed and interesting people. (It turns out this is an extremely effective way to achieve goal #1.)
- Explore a technical area I have little to no experience in.
Ask: What can you get here that you can’t get elsewhere?
For me, it’s the people and their shared learning intentions. I can get heads-down coding time anywhere I’m alone with wifi, a power outlet, and a place to sit.
Figure out what you specifically want to get out of being physically present at RC, and then optimize for it.
Preparing to maximize the week
I spent a few hours fiddling with my package manager, which feels like an awful lot relative to a week-long scope. Ideally, I would have done a lot more preparation. (Unfortuitously, I was sick the week before RC and then rehearsing all day for a dance performance right up until I had to get my stuff and go to the airport to redeye to NYC.)
Technical recommendations
- Set up any nontrivial packages, such as languages, frameworks, and data-heavy libraries, that you are interested in using.
- If you plan to fiddle with an unfamiliar technology, familiarize yourself with it beforehand. Having the basic tutorials out of the way will free up your time to collaborate and build the stuff you’re excited about.
- Make sure there’s free space on your hard drive. This is a perpetual battle against entropy for me; disk visualizers such as Disk Inventory or WinDirStat are quite helpful.
- Bonus: start building out a project idea if you have time! It doesn’t matter how much you “achieve”; the simple act of building will help you think it out.
Brainspace recommendations
- Talk with people on the RC chat and welcome threads the week before you go. It’s a good way to gauge shared interests and get inspired by other people’s ideas, and you might even inspire other people with your own ideas.
- Flesh out some project ideas and pick one that will be your top priority. You certainly don’t need to stick to it, but it’s helpful to have a well-known initial direction to kick off from, even if you change your mind mid-week.
Unexpectedly lovely things about RC
In the process of (2), I got sidetracked by many unexpected wonders (linguistics, theorem proving, feeling in solidarity while bemoaning the “but where are you from from” question) and expected distractions (talking about interesting past projects with people, fiddling with synthesizers, eating tasty food). I also enjoyed unexpected horrors during RC, such as nuking and resetting my entire package manager. Overall, it was an excellent and valuable meander through a welcome and inspiring space.
Publicly available
Some public Recurse resources you can peruse without being affiliated with RC!
- Library catalog
- Joy of Computing - inspirational collection of things Recursers have made that they’re excited about
- Recurse blog - interesting writings about community-building, inclusivity, and profiles of various Recursers