Mastering-42

less pain, more gain. An opinionated strategy guide on how to get the most out of 42 School, and/or learning to program in general.

This guide is written from 42 Students for 42 Students. Its website is built on top of Pollen.

Why?

You probably only got to this guide in the first place because there was something missing you needed to properly go on with your work at 42. We've seen and experienced these obstacles, and decided to do something about it.

With this guide, we try to get everyone of us the team mate we would've liked to have when we were stuck, or even unsure how to start.

Getting up and Running

1) 'Normal' install

1. Download & Install Racket: download.racket-lang.org
2. Install Pollen:

λ raco pkg install pollen

3. Fork this repo.
4. (When creating new files, add them to index.ptree.)
5. Start Pollens' project server:

λ raco pollen start

6. edit some file; reload your browser window; see the change.

2) Using Docker

1. Install Docker.
2. Fork this repo.
3. Run docker compose up from the root of the repository.
4. edit some file; reload your browser window; see the change.

3) Using Nix & devenv (with flakes)

1. Install Nix with the installer from Determinate Systems (recommended)
2. Fork this repo.
3. Enter the nix development environment declared in flake.nix with nix develop --impure.
4. Then, run devenv up from the root of the repository.

How do I get that damn "♢"?

If you're using VS Code, open your keybindings.json and paste the following:

{"key": "ctrl+alt+l",
 "command": "type",
 "args": {
 "text": "◊"},
 "when": "editorTextFocus"}

Contributing

First of all, thanks for considering to contribute! 😊

There are two main ways to contribute:

1. Fixing something in/Adding something to an existing guide.
2. Adding a whole new guide.

For both of these options, you have to:

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a new branch that is named after the issue you want to fix.
3. Add what you want to add
   1. For typos/small fixes, just edit the file, and commit.
   2. For new guides, you have to add the file to index.ptree as well as to index.poly.pm, as well as to git.
4. Open the pull request
5. Assign a person to review your fix/guide

Also, there is the option to create issues — the better they are described, the more we can do about it.

If you want to join us (to maintain the repo) or have any other questions, just write @bhagenlo or @skienzle on Slack.

Writing

Style guide

Considering styling & content formatting, we're trying to create a consistent experience across the whole repo.

In general, we:

• format code and file names as code
• format concepts that are mentioned for the first time as concept
• format menus or buttons as button or menu > sub-menu

We use sections as the main tool for content that can be minimized. Sec-hints are only for hints that are only relevant for some people, or only relevant once or twice.

And, last but not least, there is a narrator you can make use of :)

Tags

So that writing becomes even easier, here are all the tags with their corresponding effects:

Tag	Effect
◊title[#:sub "by marvin" #:version "42"]{libft}	Title of the Subpage, along with its subtitle and version.
◊heading[1]{libft}	A Heading with its level(1 in this case).
◊sec[#:sub "Don't try this at Home!" 2 #:open? #f]{Burning your PC.}	A Section which can be opened (or closed), with subtitle and level.
◊link["https://intra.42.fr"]{The Intra}	A Link.
◊b{bold}	bold text.
◊e{italic}	emphasized text.
◊quote-block{This is a quote.}	An indented blockquote (those blue ones)
◊narr{Here speaks the narrators voice..}	Non-indented monospaced grey text.
◊irr{You've heard that already, time and again}	Text that is more and more irrelevant, though it might be helpful as a reminder a few times before it vanishes completely (during the course of the holy graph, for example).
◊hline{}	A red, horizontal line.
◊spoiler{This could spoil you. Do you want that?}	A Spoiler that only makes itself visible on click.
◊hint[#:type "info"]{This is a piece of information for the reader}	A hint for the reader. It can be a info(blue), warning(yellow), error(red) or a resolved(green)
◊sec-hint[#:type "error" "Click here to expand."]{This is what gets shown on expansion.}	An expandable hint. (that expands and shrinks on click)
◊img["./path/to/img.jpg" #:height 10 #:width 100]{This is a caption.}	An image  —  beware that if you explicitly set height and width, you most likely distort the picture.
◊ol{◊li{}}	An ordered list.
◊ul{◊li{}}	An unordered list.
◊li-mark{a.}	Something that formats anything as a list point, so that one can mention it in the accompanying text.
◊code{#this is code.}	Inline code.
◊code-block['python]{#this is python code.}	A code block, with syntax highlighting.
◊under-construction{...}	Indicates that some part is not finished yet.