Founded in 2011, the Recurse Center is a free, self-directed, educational retreat for people who want to get better at programming, whether they've been coding for three decades or three months. Participants come from around the world for 12-week batches in New York, where they write open source software and grow together as programmers in a friendly, intellectual, and energizing environment. With an alumni network of more than 700 people in dozens of countries, we have one of the most tightly-knit, diverse, and supportive programming communities in the world. Our retreat is free for everyone, and we offer need-based living-expense grants of up to $7,000 to women and people from groups traditionally underrepresented in programming. Prior to March of 2015, we were (confusingly) named Hacker School.