I like IT and I love learning new things. That’s why cookies caught me and showed me ads about a new project that is called 42 Prague and I participated in the first Piscine in Czechia.
In short, 42 Prague is peer-to-peer programming school. It has no teachers and no classes. I know that it is difficult to imagine but it works great and once you experience it, you get addicted to it.
How I became one of the first Pisciners
As I work in Škoda Auto and it is the Founding Partner I don’t really remember if I first met 42 Prague at my work or because of cookies that were targeting me with the ads. I certainly know that since May 2022 I was thinking every day about applying for this program. At the end of May I even watched an internal podcast for Škodians with CEO of 42 Prague Daria Hvizdalova that coincidentally was filmed in the office where I work.
So in June I decided to apply. I passed two logical games and at the end I was invited to participate in October Piscine.
October Piscine: One of the best experience of my life
I cannot say what was the best period of life but I can say that I will never forget this month. I felt like if I did again my Erasmus in France or my university exchange in Chile, just this time I was in Prague, in my country and it was shorter.
The Piscine is 4-week bootcamp on C so you basically learn to code in C. This serves as a trial run for the applicants to try this education system and to make final decision if become the student. For the school it is the opportunity to observe the students and to see if they are good match for the concept. And why is it called Piscine? In French it means swimming pool so I guess that it is a test if you are able to swim in the pool full of codes.
My Piscine was great because of 2 things, I guess. The first thing is how the education concept of 42 is designed. It is not easy to explain. You face the problems and you can solve them either alone or by searching on the Internet. But this does not always work or is too slow, so here comes your best friend during this month and that is peer learning (getting help from other Pisciners that study with you).
In October Piscine my peers were simply great. Some were more lost than me and some were quite advanced with impressive results. All the peers that I remember were willing to help and were not afraid to ask for help. This cooperation is, in my opinion, the engine of 42 and the reason why this concept works. I feel that everything that I learnt during the Piscine will stay in my mind for the long time. Why? Because you face the problem, you ask someone to explain you, you understand little bit and then someone asks you to explain. And boom! By explaining to another person, by facing new questions and by seeing the problem from another perspective you start to understand it deeper and deeper.
Projects, peer-to-peer evaluations, rushes and exams
During the week we worked on projects. The projects consist of coding exercises. When we finished them we subscribed for 2 defences and 2 random peers evaluated us. That’s really important moment because in this evaluation the evaluator and the evaluated one learn so much. Sometimes it has happened to me that I had to evaluate a peer from the project that I did not understand, so I observed the code and I asked my peer to explain me the code. This was really helpful for me various times and helped me to advance faster. On the other hand when I was evaluated and my evaluator did not understand my project and I had to explain my code I could see that by explaining I learnt more and a lot of times I ended up understanding better.
On Fridays we had exams. The first three weeks we started the exam at 2pm and we could work on the exam till 6pm. The last week the Final Exam had duration of 8 hours. During the exam we had no connection to internet or access to our notes so it was a good test to really see what I was able to code alone without any help. This was the only sad moment when I could not enjoy the cooperation with my peers.
The week after the Piscine we will all know if we were accepted as students of 42. Nobody knows what are the criteria to get accepted. It is 42’s top secret. I believe they always make good and informed choices.
I am glad that this project has come to Czechia and I am proud to work for the company that allowed its foundation in Prague. Also I am happy for every other company that joins supporting 42 Prague. I believe it will bring lots of benefits to our country, to this European region, to the companies, to the students and in the end to all society.