Who comes to RC

Recursers are a diverse group united only by our admissions criteria—they are smart, friendly, intellectually curious, self-directed, enjoy programming, and want to get dramatically better.

What is the Recurse Center like? The best people to ask are Recursers themselves. Learn about the paths Recursers took to get to RC, what they did here, and what they’re up to now on Recurser paths.

Jimmy Li: Law School to Software Engineering to Tech Lead

In addition to the amazing amount of programming that I learned from people in this atmosphere of curiosity and passion, this desire to learn and this inquisitiveness was ignited in me in a way that it never had been before.

Bernie Snell: Sociology and Philosophy to Full-stack Engineer to Blockchain and Quantum Physics

I had the chance at RC to go deeper into the mathematical side of things, too – if you haven’t done that at university, you don’t get a lot of space to carve out time to learn something like that.

Anjana Vakil: Teacher to Computational Linguist to Software Engineer, Conference Speaker, and Developer Relations Consultant

I really liked the fact that RC sounded like a genuine community of learners who were excited, and that there were career placement services - that was part of the reason I decided to go to RC instead of just jumping into the waters or doing an “official” course.

At RC, you’ll get to work with and learn from kind and curious programmers of all ages and skill levels. RC is more diverse than most other tech spaces, and batches are generally between 30-45% women. You’ll meet people interested in functional programming, web development, programming languages, algorithmic art, operating systems, graphics, machine learning, scientific programming, and just about anything else you can do with a computer.

There’s no one path for coming to RC. Some Recursers come to RC to make a career change. Some are professional programmers who come to program for fun and learn new skills and technologies they don’t have the opportunity to try at work. Others come with an ambitious project they’d like to focus on.

Testimonials

Many alums have written reflections on their time at RC: their goals, their projects, what they learned, the relationships they formed, and how attending a batch impacted their lives. Below, you’ll find a selection of those posts, linked in reverse chronological order.

Andrew Healey (W2'23) — My Time At The Recurse Center

Matt Ambrogi (W2'22) — Recurse Center Final Reflection

Maggie Zhou (W1'21, S'13) — Why return to RC?

Jake Donham (SP1'21) — Recurse Center Retro

Amanda Pettenati (S2'21, W2'21) — Recurse Center: Part 1 of 2 and Part 2 of 2

Sam (SP1'21) — Beginner's Mind

Fabrizzio Gonzales Zurita (W2'21) — Programming in community

Patrick Weaver (F1'20) — Participating in a Remote Batch at RC

Sara Farquharson (S1'21, m6'20) — Lessons learned from an RC mini-batch

Serena Peruzzo (SP2'20, SP1'15) — Reflections on Spring 2 '20 and beyond

Bryan Braun (m2'20, m5'19) — The best conference I ever attended

Jennifer Wang (m4'18) — My week as a hardware-leaning programmer at RC