What I did at the Recurse Center: From DEFLATE to LLM Agents
What I did at Recurse Center
During a summer at the Recurse Center, I joined study groups on deep learning and math, reverse-engineered a board game AI, implemented the DEFLATE compression algorithm in Rust, and vibecoded games and tools with LLMs. The experience combined deep technical dives with collaborative projects, from SAT solvers for Sudoku to a constructed language.
No project made me feel more like a true hacker than that one.
- rtpg
> This included what was probably the most interesting part, writing the tricky recursive code to implement the match statement.
Back in school I found this book[0], "The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages". Flipping through it was very neat because it kinda demystified the nuts and bolts of implementing the "fancier" functional programming features for me.
Chapter 5 is about implementing pattern matching.
You read this kind of stuff and realize how easy things become when you just tackle a problem with the right mindset and abstractions. And this is a book from 1987! We've always had decent answers for a lot of the stuff.
I think it's interesting to flip through if you're a language implementer, though helps to be comfortable with reading some stuff sideways and not understanding every detail.
[0] https://simon.peytonjones.org/assets/pdfs/slpj-book-1987-sea...
- jdelman
Reading this conjured some feelings in me. At various points in my career, I’ve wanted to take a sabbatical and go to RC. Having spent the last year in the agentic coding world, the idea of writing code by hand seems quaint and outdated. Many have spoken of this feeling of loss so I’m not saying anything new here, but for some reason reading about RC in 2026 specifically cemented the idea that I’ll probably never write anything by hand again.
- triyambakam
I always shudder hearing about RC. It feels like both wrong ends of career and hobby intersecting and the whole experience sounds dank and clammy.