The Recurse Center, aka Hacker School

The Recurse Center is great for you if:
- you already know how to program
- have an idea for 6-12 weeks of self-directed learning
- don't expect mentors, classes, a curriculum or a certificate
- like and are interested in programming

This is not a networking... Read More machine that's there for boosting your resume. It's not a place to build your startup. It's not a free bootcamp for beginners.

If you can't code, if you don't like to code and if you don't want to get better at writing code, it's not for you.

Hackerschool is truly incredible. They've managed to cultivate an environment where a beginner coder who's just delving into web design can be a peer, a mentor, and a friend to a data scientist with multiple PHDs and published software. The beauty of... Read More it is that it's all community driven. There is no curriculum, there are no tests, you just show up everyday and talk to people. The result is that you cant go a single day in the batch without having fascinating conversations and learning new things from the people around you. Since everyone is in it together, there's just enough social pressure to keep people productive. You check-in every morning at 10:30am, give your group a rundown on what you accomplished the day before and your plans for the day ahead, then you team up with people who have common interests and code away on whatever you want. Thursday presentations allow for an opportunity to see the amazing projects people are doing, and frequent talks given by guest speakers and residents provide a source of cutting-edge computer science to study. If you have any doubts about applying, just do it, you won't regret it. (and it's free!!)

If your idea of learning to code or improving your coding is to continue your liberal arts studies, during which your focus was your involvement with the Campus Progressives and Feminist Studies majors; and if you agree that anything but front-end and... Read More Functional Programming is lame, old-fashioned, and uninteresting, HS is for you! It also helps if you mainly join to network, talk at the top of your lungs (during presentations and just anytime), and agree that saying "I love programming!" is reactionary and "gendered." You will be exposed to some alpha-geek cool stuff, and meet the occasional interesting co-student and invited resident, but the program is a one-trick pony for the above which will keep talking about "inclusiveness" while firmly ensuring an exemplary TheyScout party line you better don't deviate from or disagree with. It had me more depressed than enlightened, and asking around if being a software engineer typically meant an environment such as this, in which case I'd have given up that goal before even getting started. Fortunately, I heard that this is not the case, for the most part.