For the next six weeks I am attending the Recurse Center, a self-directed programming retreat. I’m spending the first week on-site in Brooklyn, and will return home to Seattle and attend the rest of the batch remotely.

One of my goals during this retreat is to write daily blog posts about what I’ve been working on. The main purpose of this exercise is self-accountability, so these posts will be more like short diary entries than polished blog articles.

To set the scene: I’m in Brooklyn, it’s snowing outside, and I’m cozily tucked into my hotel room with my tea. I spent yesterday exploring Manhattan and catching up with a dear friend, and now I’m feeling ready to work.

I spent most of today attending intro talks and meeting people. I was overwhelmed by the number of people I met (and their varied expertise) but also excited by the level of enthusiasm. I got the sense that it’s safe to make big technical leaps here because there will be someone (faculty or peers) holding the mattress for you if you fall.

I was also glad to discover that, serendipitously, many of my batch mates are also interested in learning the Rust programming language. We’ve identified some learning materials and started a study group.

Tomorrow: first day in the physical hub and setting up Rust

Major goals

• Learn Rust
  • Rust Book
  • Rustlings (exercises)
• Learn data engineering tools
  • Seattle Data Guy’s list

Minor goals

• Explore other CS/systems areas
  • To do: identify these areas more concretely
• Practice leetcoding
  • This is mostly for the job hunt, but I hope it will also alleviate my imposter syndrome
• Write this blog!
• Bonus fun project: create conlanging software
  • See how many aspects of a conlang I can randomly generate: phonetics/phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax?