piscine experience
it’s the end of 2 weeks and here’s my experience in 42
it must be a rollercoaster for new programmers because they literally throw you into an empty shell and expect you to swim your way through it
but i was pretty confident and hence complacent about the initial challenges
but then soon after submitting it realized that it actually was not that easy and that i had to take into account many such details and things i did not know
like they went so deep into literally “ls” that i had to look through the man page to find out what they wanted us to do
while this will not really help in the real world, i think it will help new comers better navigate the terminal and get a better feel for how this works
once c started ( from the 3rd challenge ) i was more comfortable
but faced a few problems
- pointers were weird
- fucking norminette
i have so many issues about norminette
it was very different from what i considered “clean” code
and this was the most irritating thing to work with
it literally doesn’t allow comments inside the file
but you get used to it so it’s okay
moving on
the first exam was slightly more difficult because i was figuring out how to write proper c ( pointers and datatypes )
but the second exam with more c experience handling with char, and more pointers i was able to rush through 60% of the exam very quickly and i called it a day because i fell asleep during the exam
i dont know the exact conditions to passing just yet, but doing many evals, passing the exam and finishing all your challenges without giving up seem to be enough
problems i faced
most of this was because of lack of structure in my personal life, but it heavily show cased in my piscine experience
heavy lack of focus
while i was doing the challenges, i would often just start scrolling twitter or get lost in something else on my phone or other work ( rift ) instead of focusing on the challenge and just completing it
i realized this the second week when i saw that most of the people were way ahead of me in the challenges ( im just in c03 right now and everyone is in like c07 )
i dont like this and i plan on fixing that in the coming days by doing a few fixes
- allocate time to 42 and only do 42 work in that
- reflect / write about what you learn
- set challenge goals and see them through
sleep and not enough time in campus
because of my extremely fucked up sleep schedule, i often overslept, did not wake up, slept entire days, stayed up all nights, slept at weird timings - last 2 weeks were very hazy and not really in a schedule
so ill try to keep a stable sleep schedule
wake up from 6-8 sleep from 10-2 ( depending on my energy levels )
and i did not come to the campus much ( pair this with the lack of focus, it’s been BAD )
experience after finishing the entire course
okay so as of writing this section of the note, it’s been ~2 years since i passed out from this course.
i remember the later weeks being much more challenging and involved compared to the initial weeks; i think it’s good for people who want to jump headfirst into becoming super technical.
is it better than college / self learning via projects? probably not.
would i suggest beginners to do this ALONGSIDE their main way of learning programming? sure if you have the time to commit