Core batch events

RC is a self-directed learning environment where Recursers are responsible for their own growth and goals.

Of course, that does not mean that there is no structure at RC! In addition to our self-directives, core hours, and shared physical and virtual spaces, we have a set of core batch events run by RC faculty to help everyone meet one another, program together, and do the self-directives.

Here are just a few that we run each batch:

Presentations

This is perhaps RC’s longest-running event: each week nine Recursers give a five-minute talk about something they’ve programmed. People present remotely and from the Hub, and occasionally an alum will drop in to give a presentation alongside people in the current batches.

Topics range wildly; some titles of past presentations include “A Wikipedia of formal proofs,” “Debugging a debugger,” “A personal journey to a personal LLM,” and “Throw away the compiler (but keep the tests!)”. Some presentations are polished, while others are much more off the cuff, and live coding happens frequently.

Presentations are a great way to learn generously, share your work, and find more people to collaborate with. We strongly encourage everyone to present at least once during their batch.

If five minutes isn’t quite enough time, we also host a round of Presentations+ every six weeks, where speakers have 12 minutes and time for a Q&A.

Pairing Workshop and Pairing Jams

Pair programming is one of the things we encourage the most at RC: it’s a great way to do all of the self-directives, it can help you clarify your thinking and get more done, and collaborating with other people is fun!

Not everyone has pair programmed before coming to RC, so during the first week of each batch, we host a Pairing Workshop where we give a talk about how we approach pair programming and share tips for making the most of it. We then match everyone up with a partner and a language they have in common, and they work on a task together for a few hours before we gather for demos.

Later in the batch we host a few all-day Pairing Jams, where people can sign up to invite others to pair with them on their project or idea, or sign up to pair on someone else’s.

Building Your Volitional Muscles Workshop

“Build your volitional muscles” is one of our self-directives, and it means building the capacity to decide what you do and why. That can be a pretty abstract concept, and so we host a workshop in the first week to help you put it into practice.

The first week of RC can be overwhelming: there are so many possible things to learn and work on. At the Building Your Volitional Muscles Workshop, Recursers sort through those possibilities — and why they’re interested in them — and come away with a much smaller list of things to pursue.

We also run a version of this event aimed at people who are thinking about the next steps in their careers, as well as a few Reflect and Unblock sessions during the batch.

Impossible Stuff Day

Impossible Stuff Day is meant to get people comfortable working at the edge of their abilities in public by way overshooting that edge on purpose, together.

Everyone chooses a goal that’s far beyond the edge of their abilities and what they think is possible and tries their best to get it done anyway! We have demos at the end of the day where people share how far they got (and many surprise themselves).

Demo-palooza

Demo-palooza is a little like a science fair: Recursers set up at stations at the Hub to demo their projects, and people can wander around to check out demos at their leisure. Remote Recursers can demo from a few dedicated screens at the Hub as well, and an RC faculty member does a virtual tour of the demo stations for anyone attending remotely.

Past demos have included an escape room in RC’s kitchen, a collaborative dance game, turning our LED arch into a multiplayer game, and much more.