These are my solutions to the exercises of the Piscine held at 42 Belgium in Brussels in February 2026 (from February 2nd to February 27th).
The Piscine (French for "swimming pool") is a teaching method developed by the French engineering school EPITA in the 1980s. It consists of a period of several days dedicated to intensive, group-based learning of a programming language. The goal is to learn as much as possible in a limited time, while strengthening group cohesion and providing a unique experience.
The term most likely comes from the expression "to be thrown into the deep end" (sauter dans le grand bain). The idea is to drop students into a difficult environment with no prior instruction, to see who learns to "swim" (code/survive) and who "drowns" (ragequits).
At 42 School, the Piscine is the final step of the admissions process before acceptance. It takes the form of a one-month-long bootcamp, seven days a week, dedicated to solving problems in the C programming language (with a bit of shell scripting during the first two days). There are no teachers, lectures, or courses; everything relies entirely on peer learning. Exercises are first assessed by other "Pisciners", then graded by a series of unit tests known as the dreaded Moulinette.
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Week | Shell 00 | Shell 01 | C 00 | C 01 | Exam 00 | Rush 00 | Rush 00 |
| 2nd Week | C 02 | C 03 | C 04 | C 05 | Exam 01 | Rush 01 | Rush 01 |
| 3rd Week | C 06 | C 07 | C 08 | C 09 | Exam 02 | Rush 02 | Rush 02 |
| 4th Week | C 10 | C 11 | C 12 | C 13 | Final Exam |
"Bonus" project: BSQ
My coding style conforms to the Norm, a set of strict styling guidelines enforced for all C exercises, which all Pisciners must follow under penalty of a zero grade.
Beyond purely cosmetic considerations, the Norm also forbids the following language constructs:
forloopsdo … whileloopsswitchstatementsgoto- the ternary operator
- declarations with initialization
- assignments inside controlling expressions
(non-exhaustive list)
Tip
You can find the latest version of the Norm in the Norminette repository – the program for checking conformity to the Norm. The version of the Norm embedded in this repo is the one in use during my Piscine.