At the Recurse Center
2023-11-03
I applied for the Recurse Center, was accepted, and am at the end of my first week of a six-week batch.
The Recurse Center is an interesting proposition, a bit of a programmer's guildhall supported by hiring, but dedicated to the principles of
honing your craft, learning together, having fun and challenging your edges. A bit like the concept of an academic sabbatical, where you don't
have to teach any courses, but can visit a new field or be a guest at another university, and make connections or deeper dives into things
you wouldn't have time for with the interruptions of your position's duties.
A programmer's intensive retreat.
It's been good for me to focus on what motivates me. At the end of the first week was an event on building your "volitional muscles", which is about translating wishes into work.
On my do at RC list:
- PixieReport - revive Tamsin Bowles' Weatherpixie, want big progress after so long, hits a number of personal learning edges/challenges, if not now when?
- Pairing - use motivated, interested peers to get perspective, energy, and satisfaction working together. Important for me.
- Federated Wiki Plugins and Frame Scripting - useful, hits multiple points of interest and availability of support/pairing.
- Glamorous Toolkit and Lepiter - seize the opportunity to pair with someone more advanced, to move my skill and understanding forward.
On my maybe at RC list:
- Exocolonist Memory Card Creator: maybe small enough to make something workable in a couple of pushes. Productize!
- Blogging (hi blog! you got a little time between meetings! have to run to the Maptime geospatial data event!) "twenty-three reasons"
On my no/not-really at RC list:
- Comfortable coding environments. I'll pick this up in pieces from the "Do", and can come back to it.
- Cloud Resume Challenge: later.
- Literate Programming, Jupyter and Observable Notebooks: later, or pick up bits by pairing with others.
- Elixir and BEAM work: sure, but I don't have any obvious milestones, so unless I get it via "Pairing", keep it on the "no priority" list.
Links later if I revise.