The Piscine is the final step before full admission to 42 Berlin. Over four intensive weeks, you’ll dive into the fundamentals of programming, no matter your starting level.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or looking to sharpen your skills, the Piscine gives you a chance to experience our hands-on, peer-driven learning approach.
It’s a condensed version of the 42 Berlin curriculum, designed to challenge you, grow your capabilities, and help you decide if this is the right environment for you. You’ll write a lot of code, meet a lot of people, and get a real taste of what life at 42 is like.
Yes, it’s tough. But it’s also where the fun begins.
For four weeks, you're invited to go all in. Seven days a week, fully immersed in learning to code and working through real challenges with your peers.
It’s intense, hands-on, and a direct experience of how things work at 42 Berlin. By the end, you’ll know if this way of learning is right for you.
No experience? That's not a problem. The Piscine starts from scratch but doesn’t slow down.
Whether you’re new to coding or brushing up, it’s built to stretch your limits and teach you fast. Everyone is challenged—no matter their background.
You won’t just learn to code—you’ll learn about yourself. The Piscine pushes you into new territory where you’ll face both technical and interpersonal challenges.
Expect moments of growth and collaboration as you build resilience and solve problems in new ways.
For a month, you are encouraged to use 7 days a week to learn code and be fully immersed in our methods. After, you will know if 42 Berlin is for you.
All experience levels welcomed. It is a very challenging experience, but the Piscine teaches code from scratch.
Aside from learning how to code, the Piscine will teach you a lot about yourself. Interpersonal and technical challenges will throw you in the deep end of problem solving that is applicable to every part of life.
Piscine exercises are grouped in modules. These modules let you focus on one specific concept. Rather than watching tutorials and copying what you see on a screen, you come up with solutions to problems by yourself and test your newly-gained knowledge in a practice-based context.
In addition to an automated evaluation, all modules must be evaluated by other candidates in the Piscine. This is what we call peer-evaluation.
This is an opportunity to discover other ways to program and discuss topics tackled in the exercise. Even if the assessor and the assessed are not at the same level, everyone can benefit from this experience: peer evaluations are when you learn the most from your experience in the Piscine
During weekends, mandatory work groups let students collaborate on projects. We call these “Rushes”.
Rushes are evaluated by the pedagogical staff or advanced students participating in educational activities. Advice given during the evaluations is precious and offers you thorough feedback about the way you code.
Once a week, a machine exam is proposed. You must solve increasingly difficult problems in a limited time in order to test your level and use what you’ve learned. You will not get any help here.
This is an opportunity to observe your progress and achievements and go beyond. You will find solutions to problems you were absolutely clueless about days or weeks before.
The Piscine is not just about work. Events are set up for candidates to meet and start bonding. Nobody knows one another in the beginning, but more often than not, work groups turn into friend groups.
42 Berlin 2023
