My journey at 42 the computer science school is coming to an end.
On 14 May 2026, the staff of my local campus of 42 made a major announcement: Starting from 29 May 2026, my local campus of 42 will transition to a satellite campus. This means that from this date onwards, us students will no longer have access to the campus and its facilities, and our student progress will be paused on 42's intranet. If we want to continue our student progress, our option is submitting a request to transfer to another 42 campus, which could be another 42 campus in Malaysia, by the end of June.
Since 42 only provides physical courses and no online courses to encourage its peer-to-peer learning model, transferring to another 42 campus would require me to either take an hours long trip to attend the school, or relocate to a different place to live, neither of which is practical for my living condition, especially since 42 will only consider our request for campus transfer if we submit it before the end of June, and my parents and I are already preparing to move to a different residential area in our city this year. Therefore, on my part, the only practical choice for me is to drop out from 42 entirely.
To be honest, I was not entirely surprised by 42 Malaysia's decision to pause the student programme of this specific campus indefinitely. Not having enough students to sustain this campus was cited as the reason for its transition to a satellite campus, which I can attest, as I attended the campus frequently and noticed the lack of active students. The campus staff have tried to attract more people to attend this campus through open days and bite-size bootcamps (named Discovery Piscine), but a new intake of official bootcamp (named Piscine) that was originally planned for April failed to come to fruition, which already made me worried about the future of my local campus of 42.
Due to 42's peer-to-peer learning model, not enough students also meant slow progress for those of us who were active, as there were not enough students to help with evaluating each other's projects to progress our curriculum. The slow progress of my curriculum due to the lack of active students was actually why I have not been updating my curriculum progress on this blog for a while. No one knows for sure why our campus failed to attract many students, so we could only speculate: maybe the people in our city are not ready for a computer science school with non-traditional learning model, or maybe it was because there was a lack of public transport route around the campus ares, etc.
By the time the campus staff announced the transition to a satellite campus, I was in Milestone 2, which was the third out of the seven milestones in 42's core curriculum, so I was not even able to complete half of the core curriculum before having to drop out. Before attending 42, I had already taught myself computer science and programming for two years through various online resources, so I intend to continue to do so even as I have to drop out from 42. Still, a major reason I attended 42 was because physical schools for computer science were a rarity in my city, let alone one that you can attend without paying tuition fees, so I find it unfortunate that my journey at 42 has to end prematurely.
Despite the unfortunate premature end to my 42 journey, I do not regret having attended 42. Attending 42 had encouraged me learn to use Vim, which led to me switching to Neovim as my go-to code editor, learn more about Linux, which led to me running my own virtual private server (VPS) and switching to using Linux desktop full-time, and refreshed my knowledge and skill in the C programming language. My 42 campus had also hosted the first WordCamp conference in my city, which I had the privilege to attend after winning a ticket giveaway hosted by the staff of my 42 campus. I will not trade these invaluable experiences for the world.
Furthermore, I am grateful of the staff of my 42 campus for their hard work in managing and organising the campus. Shout-out to the staff member who accommodate my request to add a screen brightness setting in the campus computers, since retinitis pigmentosa makes my eyes sensitive to bright lights, including bright screens of digital devices.
Since the name of the school, 42, is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it would be fitting for me to bid my farewell to the school with another reference to the series:
So long, 42, and thanks for all the fish!