A few months into my apprenticeship at Zone01 Kisumu now, and looking back at the Piscine, here's what I wish someone had told me before I walked in.
It's not really about the code
The Piscine feels like a coding test. It isn't, not really. It's a test of how you handle not knowing something, how you ask for help (or don't), and whether you can keep showing up after a day where nothing worked. The actual Go syntax you're struggling with on day 3 will feel trivial by week two. How you react to being stuck won't.
You will not finish everything, and that's fine
I went in thinking I needed to clear every exercise perfectly. I didn't. Almost nobody does. The Piscine isn't designed for you to finish everything — it's designed to see how you work under pressure with incomplete information. Stressing about the exercises you didn't get to costs you more than just... not finishing them would.
