What I Plan to Build at Recurse Center - A 12 Week Programmer's Retreat

I'm doing a 12 week batch at Recurse Center.

In this post I wanted to outline my goals for the next 12 weeks.

What is Recurse Center?

RC is a programmer's retreat. You can think of it like a writer's retreat for programmers - get together to think about and work on your porject, away from the external stimuli of a job - money, promos, reviews, etc.

They have 3 guiding principles but for the most part is self-directed:

• Work at the edge of your abilities
• Build your volitional muscles
• Learn generously

What I plan to build

During my batch I want to build software I'm excited and proud of, learn and grow, and get reacquainted with the fun of creation.

I have a few buckets I want to explore:

• Video games and simulations. I've always wanted to build a game and have dabbled with game engines and simulations in the past but never built one. By the end of the batch, I want to have a working game to help me learn about the space and process.
• Web fundamentals. I've done a lot of web programming over the years but I haven't gone deeper. I want to build a web server from scratch and play around with core libraries - thinking the likes of Datastar, HTMX, and CinderblockHtml.
• Applied AI. AI is here to stay and I use AI daily as a software engineer. I don't want to just be a consumer of this tech, I want to understand how it works under the hood and start building / producing it.

I chose buckets / themes rather than projects as I want to be flexible for new projects / ideas that come up. That's one of the big benefits of working in a batch so want to leave room for it.

Why join Recurse Center?

I could've just built this stuff myself on the side but I felt Recurse Center was a cool opportunity.

A few things I'm excited about:

• Structure - It's mostly self-directed but there's general structure for sharing projects, checking in on progress, and collaborating which I think will make it more fun and give me some accountability.
• Community + Collaboration - I'm excited to learn, grow, and be inspired by what everyone else is building. Seems more fun that way.

Anecdotally, several of the fun / weird software projects I've seen on the web in the past few years have come from people who attended RC and they enjoyed it so felt fun.

Next

If you're curious about what I end up building at RC, I'll be sharing them here.

If you liked this post you might also like:

• A list of all my projects
• 2025 Reflection
• If AI can code, what will Software Engineers do?