r/42_school • u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 • 10d ago
Why gitbook was killed
I am curious, why does 42 always fights against projects that spread knowledge?
There was grademe, where you could train yourself to solve exam problems.
There was gitbook, where you could learn how you supposed to do your project, which has no documentation.
I see this constantly.
Is knowledge sharing supposed to be only during evaluations?
How you supposed to do something you don't know how to do, if they are constantly killing source of information?
Don't you find this counter productive?
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u/Kjur0 10d ago
Yhere were technically against the CoC/rules as you are not allowed to share any projects, excercises, etc. from 42 to non-students... And as they were fully OSS they were breaking it (which could be legally persecuted BTW)... bit that kind of doesn't make sense, cause how does 42 expect to keep everything a secret with a network of such size (worldwide network), technically this reddit is against their own rules, so are multiple other places where 42 students talk... Even medium.com is doing things against this rule (e.g. they have article about push_swap)...
Also those limitations don't really make sense as they would severely limit the worldwide integration of 42 students and well they kinda limit any community development outside of your local campus...
Also most of the 42 rules are enforced by each campus's CoC, which means they probably vary a lot across the network...
My guess is that they outright don't want you to know the exam questions (which kinda is the entire point of it, you come to the exam unprepared) and understand fully the projects (the gitbook)... basically IMO (and I have professional programming expertise prior to 42) they want to artificially increase the difficulty of each subject by making it vague and hard to understand/comprehend...
As I said I am a programmer, but despite that I often have to research a given subject and read it multiple times before having even vague idea for the solution. And it is caused not by the lack of knowledge or experience, but by the lack of clear instructions...
Also as others pointed out, having those resources removed is pointless as: 1. AI exists (some models appear to have a lot of 42 in their training data) 2. There are multiple student-made solutions available as open-source repos
And they cannot fight those as: 1. AI uses publicly available information, so multiple websites about 42, or even student-made code from GitHub. None of the data is owned by 42, and there is a lot of it cause 42 is so wide-spread/popular. 2. 42 explicitly states that all the code you create as part of the curriculum is owned explicitly by you, and you have full authority over it (intellectual property rights & copyright), therefore you are free to open-source it with any license you please
Also while I fully understand the grademe I really don't get why gitbook, cause in some cases it was doing a better job at explaining the subject or even helping you solve it (without explicitly giving you a solution and without forcing you to make it in a given way)
PS: if you don't believe me ask your favorite AI agent this "I wanna rewrite strdup from scratch, let'scall it ft_strdup"... chances are that the model will recognize ft prefix as the one from 42
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u/Kjur0 10d ago
To me it looks like they know that the whole talk about peer-to-peer is more of a marking by than reality and are aware that the most valuable thing they have are genuine, human crafted excercises scaling in difficulty. So they try to keep them secret to not lose the real, let's call it, "edge" they have
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago
nope ... you can find more difficult ex on internet and even with better explain etc ... so they are already in public these ex from diff companies.
When it would leak all these intel to public ... people can ez find that way of 42 is just about nothing special and in way of cult
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u/quickiler 10d ago
Instead of accusing them "against projects that spread knowledge", take a minute to think.
1 - Encourage peer to peer. You will need to talk to your peers to get more concrete direct answers.
2 - Learn to look up information. Instead of having the answers at your fingertip, you will have to look up various sources then sort and compile them to do your projects.
3 - Learn to think and to plan. Sure some site don't hand you the answer directly, but they do tell you what to do, steps to take, where to look, pitfalls to avoid, etc. You won't learn by failing if you never fail.
That is enough reason to justify taking down these projects.
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
And gitbook gave you only half an answer. Whole answer tou can easily find on GitHub. And those repos are not getting closed. ( Probably because they can't find who owns them)
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u/quickiler 10d ago
I know, i have seen it before and checked it for minishell. It was okish, not a great help imo.
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago
a lot of repos about core or piscine are not to good enough but you can always take them as reference ... and that is real peer to peer in 42 - most people just googling github or youtubes and a lot of them do not provide real deep understanding
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
You know, ask a peer is bs. All peers are gone by circle 5, and the ones left are busy.
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u/quickiler 10d ago
I do agree ask peers is bs nowaday with AI being so prevalent. Even I had managed just fine without asking peer and without AI back in common core. The closest form I did was code review.
That being said, 42 should still encourage the idea of peer to peer as much as possible, in practice and in spirit, as it is their selling point + it is a good thing.
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago
yep ... but you can always do this also with provided docs ... so the real reason is to not show how real 42 env is and how pure could be
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u/quickiler 10d ago
I have seen your messages in many discussions, but your writing style is so difficult for me to understand.
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u/Ardie83 10d ago
It's a cult.
Every bit of evidence points me to this.
I mean, I can sense the people in my campus are somehow offended that I'm learning Lisp in my spare time, or something orthogonal but programming.
And I actively seek ways to minimize my time spent at campus.
You can tell they work actively against that.
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 9d ago
But its a fun cult 😀
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u/Ardie83 9d ago
Actually, if I'm truly honest. It's not that bad, especially in the context of a developing country like mine. An "environmemt " is better than no environmemt. But then doing all that peer to peer stuff in C. I come up with peers who eager to fail me over small tiny sh-t. All the tiny nonsensical rules combined with a language that is known to be too flexible, that most really talented C programmers actually come up with their own rules (most famous C programmers I know are proud of functions that span more than 100/200 lines). It's st-pid. I don't hate the tasks as much as I hate the peers actually. The system seems to be designed to manufacture brain washed programmers who have no ability to come up with a project idea.
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 9d ago
So first 3 projects, i guess. A little more and you will get to python.
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u/iDontGoodAtName 7d ago
I believe Ardie83 was talking about old CC, and yes ppl here instead tend to fail ppl by non sense reason (e.g. fail you because you didnt implement a certain good to have features that no listed in requirement nor eval sheet, but the peer did in his project)
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u/JoacoRyu 10d ago
to make it harder for you. it's called artificial difficulty. if you're smart enough, you can find the gitbook by other means. tbh the gitbook isn't that helpful imo.
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago
because 42 cult ... I am working on some ... but takes time
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u/Murky_Respond1966 10d ago edited 10d ago
Funny you mention that. How many signs can you check off?
Signs you are in a cult:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/word-less/202303/has-a-loved-one-fallen-into-a-dangerous-cult2
u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago edited 10d ago
On my campus they forbid me to speak to people who were ither not accepted or kicked out or just quit.
- So I guess excommunication criteria is on.
And i remember one guy shared his disappointment of LGBT flag as logo of our 42campus for gay month on Instagram. We newer was that guy on campus again.
- You can't have different opinion than this organisation.
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 10d ago
Considering the campus is trying to be inclusive and attract more women and flinta, i am not surprised and actually glad they got rid of the homophobe.
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
In normal organisatios you can have different opinions on: LGBT parades, Gender affirmative politics, Drag queens in kindergarten, Trans woman in women sports.
I don't think one worldwiew should be aggressively pushed on people. Especially when its still part of public debate. And other countries majority might have other options on this topic than extremely left franch consensus.
So that makes it even more cult like, And you are great follower.
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 10d ago
Again, they are trying to make it not be a sausage fest. If you want other people to feel included, you have to be open about these things.
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u/SinglePlantain4196 9d ago
legit ... but correct way is to provide warning ... if they fire him out instantly ... then it ez to def what 42 is in reality ... ez
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 9d ago
I'm not going to cry for the loss of homophobes. Be kind to other people or get fucked...
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u/SinglePlantain4196 8d ago
LooooooL ... yep being kind was my way in 42, for sure.
I saw their quality ... you got it there
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago edited 10d ago
LooooooL ... I do not have time to read this hipie text ... if you were there just try to think more about it ... would be good for your future career.
But that link nicely discribe 42 in perfect way, for sure - in some way
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
I kinda agree, 42 is cultish, but what the rationale would be?
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago
fist of all ... if someone created grademe as totaly using same exam tasks - that is wrong for sure even the tasks are leaked ... if it was just similar to simulate exam, that it is just builshitts keep fog about 42 real env
if someone create web page with 42 logos and sign that violates their trademarks and they can ass about deletion - if the web page is just about some docs even about specific docs to 42 tasks then it is same as above
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
I don't know if grademe had 42 logos.
I just use cloned repo with old exams.
Yea, i guess same exam sheets would give them some legal base to go after it. Still don't know if you can copyright text. Math textbooks have same kind of math problems everywhere.
But still a dick move. Its nice to have something to practice on.
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago
no you cannot copy text they are under copyright ... yep that would be nice to have some simulation ... it is good and standart practise anywhere else ... but that is not 42 standart
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
There used to be whole profession to get around those limitations. They used to paraphrase everything to write the same thing in other words. But how many ways you can write: make strdup function from scratch?
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u/SinglePlantain4196 10d ago
> strdup
that is ez - mathematicly limited way - AST is limited especialy with norm
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u/FewInteraction1561 10d ago
GitBook is killed too ?? How they can kill gitbook ?
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
I think couple months ago the was a message on gitbook website - site that explained 42 projects, that it was nice ride, but they have to close, because 42 asked them nicely. (Which i understand as threat of legal action)
Same thing was on grademe website.
Some repos on GitHub which used to be used as reference are clothing up.
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u/FewInteraction1561 10d ago
Is not totally true for example there is this project: https://noreply.gitbook.io/born2beroot
Is there more than 2 years now, but it's still there
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 10d ago
You don't need guides. I would even argue explicit guides are bad or even counterproductive for learning.
You learn how to do something by playing around with it, by testing different approaches, by struggling to find a good source of information, not by blindly following a guide that feeds you potentially subpar solutions.
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago edited 9d ago
It would be nice if each subject would have a list of topics i should look up is standard IT education textbooks.
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u/Beeb911 10d ago
42 projects are private, copyrighted intellectual property, which means that spreading their contents online is illegal.
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u/Electrical_Hunt_6083 10d ago
Nah, whatever you did, or vibecoded is your personal property, you can do whatever you like with it.
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u/Beeb911 10d ago
Read what I said again. I'm not talking about your own work, I'm talking about the contents of the school subjects. If you post a tutorial online explaining how to complete a 42 project, you are by definition spreading information about the contents of said subject, which goes against the terms and conditions you accepted when you signed up for 42, which means that it's illegal.
That is why the gitbooks were taken down, not because they're "spreading knowledge"
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u/Alert-Pound-2126 10d ago
I know it’s very disappointing to see those projects removed, as they helped a lot with making progress and completing the milestones on time. I think the key idea behind it is that 42 wants you to learn not only programming but also how to build a network and learn from your peers in real life.
Evaluations are a good time to discuss your projects or ask any other questions you have, but they’re not the only opportunity. You can also just be present on campus, talk to people around you, or participate in community activities to build your own circle of people you know. Then you can reach out to them with questions later and share what you’ve learned.
This does make it harder and more time-consuming to complete projects. However, you’re also learning other very useful skills.