The 42 curriculum is a comprehensive, gamified, peer-driven learning journey built on C and C++, designed to make you a highly-skilled software engineer.
Learn by teaching others. You develop leadership skills by explaining complex code to your peers.
No lectures. You solve real-world problems from Day 1. Your GitHub profile is your portfolio.
No grades. Advance only by proving your skills. "Try, Fail, Retry" is the core philosophy.
Earn XP and level up. Reach Level 11 to unlock the Advanced Curriculum (Master's equivalent).
Virtualisation, Docker, System Administration, TCP/IP, Sockets.
Concurrency, Parsing, Forks, Pipes, Graphics Rendering
Classes, Templates, Containers, Operator Overloading.
C, Manual Memory Management, Sorting, and Big O Complexity Analysis.
The ability to learn any new technology or framework without guidance.
Leading projects, Git workflow, and constructive code reviews.
Adapting to failure and thriving in fast-paced tech environments.
The foundation. You master C and C++ through a gamified system of interconnected projects. You will build standard libraries, UNIX programs, 3D rendering engines and network servers from scratch.
Average completion is 18 months of full-time study. The maximum is 24 months.
Time for integration. Secure a paid internship in the tech sector. Apply your newly acquired skills in a real-world production environment alongside seasoned developers.
Unlock the Advanced Curriculum. Choose your own path and dive deep into specific high-level fields. Become a master of your chosen architecture.
Complete a senior-level work experience at a tech company, contribute heavily to an open-source framework, or launch your own entrepreneurial project.
Eight thematic areas, structured as a branching tree. Complete a project, unlock the next branch.
Master C from the ground up. Build your own tools while learning how memory actually works. String manipulation, dynamic allocation, file I/O, and the discipline of writing code that compiles clean under strict standards.
Develop the mindset of a problem solver. Design algorithms that balance efficiency against hard resource constraints, then prove your solution is optimal under peer scrutiny.
Step into the role of a system administrator. Build, secure and manage server infrastructure from scratch. Partition disks, harden a firewall, automate jobs, then containerise the lot.
Unlock the power of concurrent systems. Manage threads, processes and shared resources without deadlocking. Then build your own shell to see how UNIX really handles a command.
Where logic meets the screen. Build 2D and pseudo-3D graphical programs using MiniLibX, applying linear algebra and rendering maths to produce something you can actually look at.
Transition from procedural to object-oriented thinking. Nine escalating modules take you from your first class to templates, containers and the Orthodox Canonical Form.
Understand the web from the inside out. Implement the protocols you have been using all along, in C++, handling hundreds of simultaneous connections without a framework in sight.
The final boss. Build a complete single-page application with a real-time multiplayer game at its centre, then run the whole thing in containers. Everything you have learned, shipped as one product.
