Hi! I'm Pedro, 42 Lausanne student since September 2025.

It all started when I got my first laptop, tinkering with cracks and games. Once I moved to Switzerland, I was building PCs from junkyard parts just to play Minecraft. Around 2013-2014 I started exploring Linux, and even had family friends showing me electricity work and some basics of C and C++ (I was completely lost watching all those lines of code xD).

That's when I caught the bug for real. Hardware, building and maintaining machines, formatting Windows, messing with Linux, even some pentesting. I tried different formations but none of them clicked. Then I found 42 Lausanne.

"Don't be a frameworker, be an engineer", that has been my mindset since I joined 42 Lausanne. I don't want to just learn a language, but also
understand how everything works under the hood. These days, learning and knowing how to code is not enough, knowing how to think like an engineer is essential to be a great developer.

My short/medium-term goal is to finish 42 common core with Cybersecurity and Full Stack specializations. Long-term, I want to go live in Quebec, gain experience there and leverage funds to start my own business with close friends.

Since I was young, I've loved doing front-end, thinking UI/UX first, but also cybersecurity, trying to hack virtual machines, tinkering with
Linux whether it's Debian, Parrot OS, Kali or even Blackbox.

I found out about 42 thanks to a youtuber called Amy Plant. About a year ago I thought "wait, her school is SO cool, isn't there anything like that in Switzerland?" That's when I found 42 Lausanne. I was surprised the French Swiss part got a 42 school before Zurich or any German canton.

I did the online games, passed them easily, and tried to join the 2024 piscine. But I was already late. Had to wait almost a year. So I prepared: YouTube videos about getting into 42, how to learn C, what they're looking for. By the time the piscine came, I knew they wanted someone with programming logic, capable of autonomy but also teamwork.

The weekend before the piscine I was so stressed. What will it be like? Will people be nice? The piscine went great. Not perfect marks, but I was understanding what I was doing, learning, progressing. And the best part? I made friends. We helped each other, and even under big stress, everyone was so nice.

Now that I'm a student at 42 Lausanne, I can say it clearly: I love 42's philosophy. Learning autonomously, but also learning from others. And others learning from you.

If you're thinking about it: go for it. 42 is free, accessible, and genuinely one of the best experiences I've had.

Day-to-day I run on Fedora with Neovim as my main editor, configured from scratch. My setup is built entirely by myself. I like knowing exactly what's running on my machine.

Right now my focus is C at 42. Pointers, memory, understanding what's really happening under the hood. But I still have my web background in HTML/CSS/JS, React, Tailwind, PHP.

On the infra side, I learned a lot during my formations: servers, virtualization, firewalls, Cisco, Active Directory... I got hands-on experience in real professional environments. At home it's more modest, a Raspberry Pi doing the job, but the foundations are solid. That's what helped me nail born2beroot.

And hardware remains my first love. Taking apart, repairing, upgrading, soldering. When something breaks, my first instinct is to open it, not throw it away.