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Nor does it have any connection to the popular notion of a “hacker” as someone who breaks into computer systems — rather, “hacker” here was intended to suggest a programmer who is technically resourceful but also supportive of other programmers.<ref>{{cite web
Nor does it have any connection to the popular notion of a hacker as someone who breaks into computer systems — rather, “hacker” here was intended to suggest a programmer who is technically resourceful but also supportive of other programmers.<ref>{{cite web
|url= https://www.recurse.com/blog/12-what-we-mean-by-hacker
|url= https://www.recurse.com/blog/12-what-we-mean-by-hacker
|title= What we mean when we say ‘hacker’
|title= What we mean when we say ‘hacker’

Revision as of 03:36, 28 November 2016

The Recurse Center
Type of site
Intentional community
HeadquartersNew York, New York
Owner5blades, Inc.
Founder(s)David Albert, Nick Bergson-Shilcock, Sonali Sridhar
URLrecurse.com
Commercialyes

The Recurse Center (formerly known as Hacker School; also called RC) is an independent computer programming retreat and intentional community. It provides a self-directed academic environment for computer programmers of all levels to improve their skills in, without charge. There is no curriculum and no particular programming languages or paradigms are institutionally favored; instead, participants work on open-source projects of their own choice, alone or collaboratively, as they see best.

History

The Center was initially founded in the Summer of 2010 as Hackruiter, an engineering recruiting company, using seed money from Y Combinator. The idea quickly arose of trying to transform start-up recruiting by running a retreat as part of the process, with the goal of helping clients become better programmers.[1]

It officially opened its doors as “Hacker School” in New York in July, 2011, obliquely anticipating the coding bootcamp movement that arose in the 2010s. Hacker School came to wide public attention in mid-2012, when it partnered with the e-commerce company Etsy to offer “Hacker Grants” in support of female developers.[2][3][4] A number of companies soon joined Etsy in funding these grants, and in 2014 the grant program expanded to offer support to other groups not well represented in American technology industries.[5]

In 2015 Hacker School was renamed the Recurse Center.

Business model

The programming retreat is free of charge to attend, although admission is highly competitive. The organization itself is for-profit and supports itself through recruitment, by placing some participants in programming jobs. In 2014 the retreats reached the "tipping point" of self-sufficiency from recruiting income.[6]

The company has continued to evolve and to experiment with its business model. Experiments have included

  • “facilitators” to help guide participants,[7][8]
  • a "residents" program for shorter-term specialist guidance,[9]
  • a journal about programming (Code Words),[10]
  • a research lab,[6][11]
  • half-length batches,[12] and
  • a mentoring program for new coders.[13]

Educational philosophy and name

Despite its original name ”Hacker School“, the Recurse Center is not a school — its model of self-directed learning was inspired by the Unschooling philosophy of John Holt (1923–1985).[14] Nor does it have any connection to the popular notion of a hacker as someone who breaks into computer systems — rather, “hacker” here was intended to suggest a programmer who is technically resourceful but also supportive of other programmers.[15]

In 2015 the organization changed its name to the Recurse Center so as to avoid confusion over these matters.[16]

Social environment and influence

To promote a study environment in which people feel comfortable asking each other for guidance and criticism, the Center has a set of “lightweight social rules” to guide interactions between participants. In contrast to traditional “codes of conduct”, many of which have a legalistic tone, the social rules are intended to shepherd community behavior unobtrusively, “to remove as many distractions as possible so everyone can focus on programming.”[17]

These social rules are one of the retreat’s most influential features and have been adopted by a number of other programming communities.[18][19][20][21][22]

There is a large community of alumni that have remained active past the end of their ”batch“, interacting with each other and with new participants in person or via virtual tools.[23]

Specializations of participants

The level of participants' skill and experience is diverse, in common with retreats in other creative fields and unlike many engineering organizations. Participants range from long-experienced software developers on sabbatical, to people who have been coding for only a few months, to retirees, to college students on vacation.[24] Some participants hold doctoral degrees; others have left school before completing secondary or even primary education. Many participants are engineers, but others have strong non-engineering backgrounds, in the Humanities, journalism, pure mathematics, the performing arts, among many others.

References

  1. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (January 6, 2012). "The Path to Hacker School". Blog. Retrieved November 26, 2016.
  2. ^ Daniel Nye Griffiths (April 6, 2012). "Etsy To Fund "Hacker School" Grants For Women". Tech. Forbes. Retrieved June 16, 2012.
  3. ^ Rebecca J. Rosen (February 7, 2013). "Etsy CTO: Prioritizing Diversity in Our Hiring Fielded Better Women … and Men". Technology. The Atlantic. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  4. ^ Leslie Bradshaw (March 4, 2013). "Martha Kelly Girdler on How to Cultivate More Female Engineers and on Being Part of Etsy's 500% Success Story". Leadership. Forbes. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  5. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (September 25, 2014). "Building a better and more diverse community". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 1, 2014.
  6. ^ a b Nick Bergson-Shilcock (May 11, 2015). "Michael Nielsen joins the Recurse Center to help build a research lab". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 26, 2016.
  7. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (May 4, 2012). "Welcome Tom and Alan!". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  8. ^ Dave Albert (December 5, 2013). "Treating people like adults". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  9. ^ "Residents". Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  10. ^ "Code Words". Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  11. ^ Dave Albert (August 23, 2016). "Pausing RC Research". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  12. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (February 25, 2016). "You can now attend RC Retreat for six weeks". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  13. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (January 20, 2016). "RC Start: Free one-on-one mentorship for new programmers". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  14. ^ Madeline McSherry (March 29, 2013). "Why Everyone Should Learn to Code: An Event Recap". Future Tense. Slate. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  15. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (December 17, 2012). "What we mean when we say 'hacker'". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  16. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (March 25, 2015). "Hacker School is now the Recurse Center". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 26, 2016.
  17. ^ "Social rules". Manual. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  18. ^ "Good Conduct". Haskell Now. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  19. ^ "Social Rules". The Hacktory. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  20. ^ "Code of Conduct". Unhackathon. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  21. ^ "Code of Conduct". !!con. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  22. ^ "Code of Conduct". Hack && Tell. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  23. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (September 25, 2015). "Zulip: Supporting OSS at the Recurse Center". Blog. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  24. ^ Nick Bergson-Shilcock (July 30, 2015). "Three reasons to apply (and three reasons not to)". Blog. Recurse Center. Retrieved November 27, 2016.

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