It's optional. It does not give credits/point/xp whatever if you do it. So they don't go on it. Sometimes they may not know the existence of this thing.
During the first year, we had projets with limited time (depends on the difficulty, from 1 to 6 weeks). We had 2/3 projets at the same time.
This school is kinda like Epitech. The staff is composed by students (I was one of them, I joined them after 3/4 month of learning at 42) and people who came from Epitech (sysadmins, 'teachers', web dev). Yes, there is a kind of 'teachers'. They create the first videos, the subjects (mostly taken from Epitech too :))
But this year, there was a big change. Now student can create subjects, videos. The projects are not limited in time.
We are not working for 100hours/week, but a lot of people are at school for more than 50hours/week. This depends on their faculty to learn and their motivation.
But...
There is some bad points for 42.
There is no labs. There is no books. There is no English class (as you can see with my poor english :) ), no math class, no French class (and a lot of people really need it....).
When you see people reading the man pages in french, you feel sad for them.
Whe you see people not able to do some math, you feel sad for them too.
And, seriously, a library or some labs for the students can be a good thing.
42 is a cool thing for people who have not the 'baccalauréat'.
I dont have this degree but thanks 42, now I have a great job.
If I had this degree, my choice for a school might be something like ENSIMAG / ENSEIRB, but definitly not Epita / Epitech.
Btw.
> In fact, 40 percent of École 42’s students haven’t finished high school. Others have graduated from Stanford or MIT or other prestigious institutions.
Why someone from a prestigious school would like to come to 42 ?