Why RC?

After moving from Munich to Seattle in early 2025, I've been on a career break, using the time to prepare for interviews, work on side projects, and learn new things. I've followed several RC alums, especially Julia Evans, for quite a while and have always dreamt of pursuing an experience like this.

Unfortunately, since I started programming, I've never truly built or learned something from scratch that wasn't driven by an extrinsic motivation, such as securing a job or upskilling for a work project. While I've enjoyed that deterministic and practical approach, my creative side has never felt satisfied. For me, the joy of writing poetry, taking photographs, or cooking a delicacy has always stemmed from pure pleasure.

So, the core idea behind this programming "retreat," beyond simply learning new things, is to find pleasure in programming and create something I can personally consume daily—whether it's a game, a new skill, or simply exploring programming tidbits. My plan is to attend RC in a hybrid format: starting virtually from Seattle for the first month, then joining in person in NYC for the following one-two months, balancing the experience with the cost of living there.

How RC?

RC has a very helpful page that details the application steps. In my written application, I aimed for thoroughness and complete honesty. In my opinion, they're looking for individuals who, while not necessarily seasoned developers, possess some experience with programming concepts; professional programming experience is a definite plus.

After the written application, the next stage was a "cultural interview." This interview explored my interests and experience, assessing how well they aligned with RC's philosophy. While they advise against extensive preparation, I personally prepped for the following questions. Of course, there's no single "right" answer, and responses depend on individual perspectives, but I still recommend practicing your answers aloud to calm any pre-interview jitters.

• What do you think RC is?
• Why do you want to attend RC?
• What are you working on currently?
• What do you hope to get out of your time here?
• How would you tell if your batch was a success?
• Tell me about a bug that you solved recently?

After successfully navigating the previous rounds, the final step was a pair programming exercise. You can pick from their provided tasks or choose your own. The process involves submitting a working code solution for your chosen task in a GitHub repository. Then, during the interview, you'll pair program with one of RC alum, demonstrating your thought process and working to build an extension or new feature for the code.

They explicitly advise against over-preparing for this round. However, as someone with limited pair programming experience, I was quite nervous. I spent time considering potential extensions and features for the task I submitted. Since Python is my only programming language, I was comfortable coding in it, but I was also aware of the possibility of "trick questions."

Despite my initial nerves, my experience was very positive. The interviewer was friendly, and we had a great discussion about edge cases where the code might fail, as well as potential optimizations for efficiency and speed. While I wasn't able to fully implement the feature we discussed, I believe the time constraints mean the focus is more on how you think and structure your code rather than delivering a complete, working solution.

Just a week after my final interview, the acceptance email arrived! I chose to enroll in the summer batch of 2025.

What's during RC?

So, I don't have a concrete plan to do a specific thing during my time at RC. But these are the following things/stuff that I'm interested to work/learn

• Vibe coding an event website from the ground up
• Building a word game from scratch.
• Penning some insightful (or at least entertaining) blog posts about whatever fascinating things I learn.
• Completing the HuggingFace AI Agent course and then building my own agent sidekick.

What after RC?

Given the challenging job market in the US, my plan is to begin my job search immediately after concluding my time at RC in a couple of months. Towards the end of my program, I'll also dedicate time to resume my preparation for ML and Software System Design along with LeetCode.