Project ideas coming into Recurse Center (RC)

Or, "how many things can this guy start and not finish?"

2026-08-03

One week left until I join the Recurse Center.

I am interested in lots of things, and many of them spark my interest even though I never actually try doing them by hand even once. Maybe this is just an attention span problem. These are mostly systems-related things like databases, search engines, game engines, etc., but some range from simulations to bioinformatics to music making with code. So, I figured, why not try lots of things and see what happens?

While thinking of getting into RC, I was planning to do a big project for the entire duration of my batch (Fall 1 ‘26), but after lots of free time and shower thoughts, that may not be exactly what I really want. Maybe what I want is to trigger my curiosity in the form of different projects. Interested in how Raft works? Give it a shot by implementing it. Boids is really interesting, why not try simulating it? And so many other questions. If none of these work out, of course, I can always go back to my big project. This was going to be a compiler backend, like LLVM or QBE, written from scratch…

For some reason, I interpret the phrase “shipping” as some marketing-ish slang, or something you have to do in order to get the big money, so I don’t like using it. The idea is to have fun, either way. None of these things have to turn to a “big project” that I can “ship”.

Here’s a list of things that interest me and I may be able to tackle in a few days during my time at RC:

As I’m attending the full batch (12 weeks), I have plenty of time to try both short (1-4 day) and big projects (4+ days). Potentially with different programming language. Who knows? Hopefully this record will be a helpful guide during my time, if I ever run out of ideas.

Inspiration #