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42 (school)

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Re: 42 (school)

#131

Post by wutschkef »

arandr0x wrote: post #111
wutschkef wrote: post #75

I'm a student at the Paris 42 campus. It is not true that the average 42 student lack theoretical understanding. We may not take a semester long course in compiler theory for example, but we do manage to build our own shell scripting interpreters and pick up enough compiler theory to define a grammar, build a parser to produce an AST and then interpret it accordingly. The same goes for other theoretical foundations o…

What is your mathematics curriculum like?

there is no maths curriculum. in the first year we do some projects that require sorting efficiently (i picked up a text book and taught myself O notation, and introductory algorithms and data structures content through a ocw course). There is also a networking project that exposes us to graphs and graph traversal algorithms.

i do have a solid maths background from previous studies, but i dont use much of it on an average day.

Re: 42 (school)

#132

Post by ElFitz »

v_lisivka wrote: post #116
ElFitz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Like you don't care about one's ability to make some concrete when hiring an architect. It's nice to have, might be essential on some specific projects. Usually won't matter.

I'm sorry, but if architect cannot make some concrete, i.e. he doesn't know basics of his profession, what you expect from him? A house? Yes, you can hire him, but that will cost you lot of money. There are tons of examples of cheap architect work, e.g. collapsed bridges in the Western Europe.

I seriously wonder about the proportion of architects who ever mixed any concrete themselves in their lives.

Seriously, almost no developer would be able to write a compiler today. The same way I wouldn't be able to build a micro-processor worth anything.

You wouldn't expect any compiler knowledge from most web (back or front) developers, the same way you wouldn't expect much GUI or globally distributed consistent databases knowledge or experience from most embedded developers.

And it's just fine. It's their problem, their limitation, their career, them missing out and, no, in most cases, it won't impact their jobs or the quality of what they make in any way.

Why do you have to have a problem with that ?

Edit: also, bridges collapse all over the world. Tunnels too.

Re: 42 (school)

#133

Post by roblabla »

monkeynotes wrote: post #115

I don't know how anyone has the energy to write code for 50+ hours a week for a whole year. Surely you have some burn out with that as your base-line cadence. I have no doubt some younger people, competitive alpha minds would take this in their stride, but I worry this culture of hyper competitiveness permeates into employment. When this stuff is accepted as 'work ethic' and normalized you tilt toward what some asian…

Disclaimer: I'm a 42 student.

I agree with this sentiment so damn much. When I joined the school, I was very afraid that such a rhythm would lead me to a fast burnout.

Thankfully, there's no pressure to do any kind of crazy hours. The school is open 24/7, and there are no deadlines for projects or whatever. This is a two edged sword: on one hand, there's an incentive to stay at school as long as possible, and put in some crazy hours. On the other side, though, it creates a lot of flexibility for student. If you need to take a breather, you can totally put in less hours, or even totally stop going for a while. If you need to do some odd hours, like working a night schedule, that's also possible.

Of course, I have put in some 50+hr in a week sometimes,while hacking away on a project. But i have also clocked 25hr some weeks. This absolute flexibility is a real stress relief.

Re: 42 (school)

#134

Post by aloisdg »

sylflo wrote: post #129
timtosi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been through Epitech which is the school that greatly inspired 42 (same founders) and I would like to add some details on top of that. Even if it's true that Epitech us mainly about coding, the program enforce a coding standard that is a huge part of the final grade of each coding project (small functions, 80 char per line of code...). Fom the second year, components decoupling and basic design patterns are…

They have the same rules at 42 to code, 80 columns, 25 lines for a function, ect... Where Epitech is better is that from the middle of the third until the end of the beginning of the five year, you have to work on a end study project. You need to prepare everything before coding, database schema, how will you do your tests, ect.. Even tough I find Epitech better than 42 on this, Epitech is also lacking a lot of thing…

Are you really talking about the EIP?

Re: 42 (school)

#135

Post by my_usernam3 »

BeetleB wrote: post #124
avip wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried applying to a publicly funded phd program or med school @age > 45?

I don't know about PhD, but I know several who went to med school after the age of 40. Lots of weird midlife crises out there.

I know I could see myself wanting a PhD if I suddenly made enough money to finance the rest of my life.

Re: 42 (school)

#136

Post by flowwlol »

LukeB42 wrote: post #98
ElFitz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite honestly, most companies don't care about one's compiler theory knowledge or ability to build shell scripting interpreters, nor should they.

> Quite honestly, most companies don't care about one's compiler theory knowledge or ability to build shell scripting interpreters, nor should they. Right. Like how you don't care about the persons' physics knowledge when hiring an architect. /s

I'm going to say it. 99% of 42s students wont be architects. It's just the reality. I come from one of these schools, and the best thing you can say about the teaching : It teaches you how to learn. If you think anything else you learn is how it works in a company. you're wrong :)

Re: 42 (school)

#137

Post by palunon »

namdnay wrote: post #71
maxymoos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison purposes, tuition fees in a French public engineering school were around 700€/$800 per year when I was there about a decade ago, and I wouldn't expect this to have changed much.

And if you're the best of the best, they pay you to attend (X, ENS)

No they don't. The chaussette has to be repaid...

Re: 42 (school)

#138

Post by kjeetgill »

arkh wrote: post #58
valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

> To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before they shoot. People should learn this mantra: coding is to software development what moving pieces is to chess.

I know what you're getting at and it's a good mantra in a 'corrective' sense.

Perhaps a closer (nitpicky?) metaphor would be running to basket ball.

It's clearly important to be able to run well above average but trying to get to sprinter/marathoner levels has little to no benefit. Especially if it's at the expense of other skills like shooting, jumping, reflexes, etc.

Re: 42 (school)

#139

Post by v_lisivka »

ElFitz wrote: post #132
v_lisivka wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but if architect cannot make some concrete, i.e. he doesn't know basics of his profession, what you expect from him? A house? Yes, you can hire him, but that will cost you lot of money. There are tons of examples of cheap architect work, e.g. collapsed bridges in the Western Europe.

I seriously wonder about the proportion of architects who ever mixed any concrete themselves in their lives. Seriously, almost no developer would be able to write a compiler today. The same way I wouldn't be able to build a micro-processor worth anything. You wouldn't expect any compiler knowledge from most web (back or front) developers, the same way you wouldn't expect much GUI or globally distributed consistent da…

I'm software developer (backend, fronted, cloud, embedded, etc), but it's often very helpful to know how hardware works, how processor works, how kernel works, how compiler works, how network works, and so on, because it's allow me to make my abstraction at top of all these layers to work much more efficient. It's not expected that I will be expert in all that, but it's expected that I will know basics, so I will not make noob mistakes. Are you expecting noob mistakes from architect, which made your home? Or it's ok if he made mistakes in someone else home or bridge?

Re: 42 (school)

#140

Post by titanix2 »

moviuro wrote: post #102
maxymoos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison purposes, tuition fees in a French public engineering school were around 700€/$800 per year when I was there about a decade ago, and I wouldn't expect this to have changed much.

2012-2015 was still 700€/year at Centrale - I'll let you guess which one. Don't forget though that housing, food, "Sécurité Sociale", library, etc. weren't included.

Yes but food and housing is not included either when attending a private school.
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