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Minor Gripe

2019-08-10 -- S1'19 Return Statement

Chris Ertel

I’ve spent the last several months in the Summer 1 2019 batch at the Recurse Center. The whole trip has been a really interesting and occasionally intense experience, but I don’t regret a moment of it.

What I worked on

My main project, spanning about ten of the twelve weeks of the time at RC, was a 3D rigid physics engine written in Elixir. I got as far as collision detection, and then got stuck for the last couple of weeks on the project on convex polyhedra intersection. I’ve written previously about that, and am planning to keep banging on it in the run-up to Elixirconf this year.

I’m somewhat disappointed that I was not able to complete my main project, but I figured that that was a possible outcome. In the meantime, I did make a lot of progress on it and on other things. Here are some of the things I spent time on:

Software

Talks and people

Regular events

Conclusion

So, there are a whole bunch of feelings about the whole thing, and I can’t really hope to get them all here (as my train hurtles towards Houston). I will say that, if you are at all interested in broadening your horizons, finding work, and getting a chance to become better as a developer, apply to Recurse. They have 1, 6, and 12 week batches, and they have wonderful stipends to help out folks who qualify and might not otherwise be able to attend.

I don’t want to be too dramatic, but…look.

The caliber of people I shared my time with and the caliber of interactions I had are the sort of thing that I imagined happened in the halls of Xerox PARC or Bell Labs back in the day.

We all have rent to pay, we all have hustles to run, but having the time and the space to play with new ideas and trade thoughts with new people is something that is incredibly valuable. Try it out. :)


Tags: rc

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