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Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

recurse.com

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Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#71

Post by nicholasjbs »

dmazin wrote: post #69
nicholasjbs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were mainly torn between choosing a name that was completely meaningless and one that was mostly meaningless, but which had some connotations to programming. We opted to do the latter. All the meaningful, descriptive names we could come up with -- like "Programming Retreat" -- are too generic and/or have the same problems as "Hacker School." (We also wanted to make sure we could get the .com, and we wanted to avoi…

Thank you for the reply! I agree that meaningless phrases are good for brands, and much better than ones with baggage (as you say, in that regard Hacker School can't get much worse). And I believe that you will be able to properly add meaning to "Recurse Center." My point with my "umph" comment was that "School" refers to an object/category, while "Center" refers to a blank entity, it's kind of a dead word (it also h…

Yes, we considered a few others. For instance, we thought about "retreat" but decided against it because it felt too limited, and we considered "institute" but worried it would come off as pretentious.

Center is definitely kind of a "dead" word, but we'd rather err on the side of too little meaning rather than too much given our past mistakes :) (We also like the acronym "RC" more than "RR" or "RI.")

Thanks for the thoughtful comments!

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#72

Post by x0x0 »

dmazin wrote: post #16

I love Hacker School (the entity, not the name) but Recurse Center is a strange choice. "Recurse" does not bring to mind the word "recursion" by itself, and while "School" is a meaningful word, "Center" isn't. It has no umph as a phrase. The reason for the change is completely sound, but the new name is just a little strange to me.

It's more like a hacker reading group -- like an academic reading group -- except for coding. Reading group is not a catchy name though =P

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#74

Post by Thrymr »

Karunamon wrote: post #9

While catchy, “Hacker School” has always been an actively bad name for us. Both words are problematic and misleading. “Hacker” is bad because so much of the world thinks of hackers as computer criminals and not clever programmers, which is the meaning we intended. And even for many people familiar with our use of the word, “hacker” can feel exclusionary. (“Hacker” was also not exactly helpful to the roughly 30% of ea…

It is worth stepping back once in a while and thinking about how things appear to non-technical people. The FBI was suspicious of Serge Aleynikov in part due to his use of a "subversion repository" [0]. "Git" isn't all that appealing to non-technical British audiences, either.

[0] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman...

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#75

Post by Thrymr »

throwaway344 wrote: post #67
briandear wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skin color has nothing to do with visa rejections. There are thousands of visas issued each day in all sorts of "dark skinned" countries. The issue is if the person is likely to overstay their visa. Do they have a job? A family? A bank account? Own property? Have other compelling reasons to return to their home country. If they are young, unemployed and single without many other resources; a denial is likely, for obv…

I think the GP is saying that they wonder if an equivalent Northern European with identical stats would have been rejected. They're not disputing the fact that some white people get denied, but rather that they get denied less than other groups.

Of course, that's baked into the system, since most European countries are part of the visa waiver program and citizens don't require a visa to enter the US.

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#76

Post by tricolon »

briandear wrote: post #57
majke wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had very similar experience, but was able to convince the immigration officer that Hacker School has nothing to do with Hackers nor Schools (which require F1 visas). That was a fun experience and added to the charm of the original name :)

Actually, Hacker School is vocational and requires an "M" visa. But, Hacker School isn't a Student and Exchange Visitor Program certified school. So they can't sponsor visas. Which would explain exactly why denials would be happening. The purpose of the stay is "study" but the visa type is "tourist." That's the reason for rejections. It isn't the school name that creates the problem, it's the mismatched purpose of tr…

> I'm not sure why you'd be convincing the Immigration Officer of anything, assuming you were at the port of entry with a valid visa.

Because immigration officers can and will deny a person entry if it is believed they will violate the terms of their visa. Even if the consulate and USCIS has approved you in good faith, an immigration officer has the right to reject you for any reason.

I've had trick questions asked of me upon entry. I've had to make awkward small talk about key topics. They look for red flags and inconsistencies.

I've also had officers essentially just wave me through.

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#77

Post by icco »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #68

Best of luck to Rehab Center... er I mean, Recourse Center. Scratch that - Recurse Center (whatever "recurse" means). (Yes, I know "recurse" is related to "recursive" but nobody says "recurse". The association is too distant.)

Man, this is exactly where my mind went as well.

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#78

Post by oskarth »

pimlottc wrote: post #48

I noticed the testimonials on the front page [0] have all be modified to say "Recurse Center" even though some are years old. A quick Internet Archive check [1] confirms they originally read "Hacker School". I'm not sure if this is completely ethical; granted, it's just a name change, but they are presented as being direct quotes, while clearly they no longer are. 0: https://www.recurse.com/#testimonials 1: https://w…

I'm Oskar on that testimonials page. Nick asked me (and the other people there) before updating the string "Hacker School" with "the Recurse Center". It's a direct quote with a minor approved edit.

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#79

Post by nostrademons »

jordigh wrote: post #43

This saddens me because it seemed like a good opportunity for the mainstream media to reacquire the good definition of "hacker". I had started to see newspaper articles that used the good meaning. Cultural inertia on terminology can change, and in the hacker case, I think it should. We certainly rarely say "negro" nowadays in the US except in historical contexts. I'm saddened that Hacker School gave up on the languag…

A for-profit company's name isn't really the right venue for that. No matter how successful Hacker School is, it's unlikely that a significant enough fraction of the population will have positive personal associations with it to alter their emotional perception. Newspaper articles don't count, generally; they reflect the popular mood more than they influence it.

The way to reclaim "hacker" is to use it and adopt it, personally, in 1-on-1 social conversation. Preferably with non-techies who you are close to. That way people's positives associations with you rub off on the terms that you use to describe yourself. We don't use "negro" these days because most of us know and have positive associations with black people in social contexts; that makes its old connotation of inferiority incongruent with our personal experience. Similarly, the LGTBQA movement is succeeding because a large number of people now realize they have friends and neighbors who are gay, and it's much harder to cast that as deviant behavior when you personally know good people who self-identify as gay.

Re: Hacker School is now the Recurse Center

#80

Post by [deleted] »

voteapathy wrote: post #52
pash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the verb recurse is used in the name as an adjective when we already have a perfectly good adjectival form of the word— recursive —that is also more immediately familiar. People who consider recurse an ugly back-formation (preferring to recur ) will wince, cringe, and decry the gramatical turpitude all at once. But enough criticism—here's an attempt at something constructive: How about "Recursity"? The .com addre…

Sounds like they're trying to stick to a name with more lasting weight and a sense of authority. A name like Recursity may be trendy (a portmanteau ending in the letter 'y'), but I suspect ten years from now it will look very tacky.

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