# about

how i got from a sql course at sixteen to writing software full time

## 2017

my first contact with software happened when i decided to become minimally
useful. i was sixteen. i googled for courses, found one on sql server, talked to
my parents and got enrolled.

it was a small course about sql, and my class was full of employees from real
companies. me and my cousin (who i had talked into joining), were the only two
who did not know what sql was even for.

i learned everything there was to learn and finished top of the class. but
nobody could explain to me what a query was for in real life. i could not grasp
that a computer would run that thing on its own. i had never seen programming.

![sql server certificate](/about/sql-certificate.jpg)
*the sql server course, 2017*

right after that i took a course on php, html and css. that
is when i understood where sql fit. but i was missing something essential:
repertoire. i had no idea where any of it could be applied.

![web development certificate](/about/web-certificate.jpg)
*php, html and css course, 2017 *

## phones

during that course i got the chance to learn how to repair phones, and since it
was tangible in a way software was not, i did not think twice. fix the phone,
get paid. i dropped software and went to hardware.

which is me dressing it up. i worked at a market stall in ridiculous conditions.
but everything teaches you something.

![the market stall](/about/market-stall.jpg)
*the stall (thanks mr. Paulo for the opportunity)*

that shop could not even cover my bus fare, so when my student pass ran out i
had to leave. i learned the trade, settled into another shop, saved some money,
and in 2018 moved into an apartment with a friend.

it was a big change. in my whole social circle i was the only one who managed to
have a job and a place right after turning eighteen.

which is me dressing it up again. our apartment did not have a single piece of
furniture. and everything teaches you something.

![the first apartment, empty](/about/first-apartment.jpg)
*the apartment, before the furniture*

## 2019

a few months later, once we had bought some furniture and my place had become
where everyone met, a cousin showed up on a random sunday night with a ticket to
new york for april 4th, 2019. the plan was to land there, go to boston, and
spend six months working at whatever showed up.

i bought a ticket the same night, without thinking. on april 4th i left for the
absolute unknown with no goal beyond learning something, in whatever form.

![back bay, boston](/about/boston-backbay-2019.jpg)
*back bay, boston, may 26th 2019*

that part of my life was hard. eighteen years old, no english, and exposed to
every kind of trouble youth can find. i held on for six months that felt like
six years. i worked two jobs faithfully and paid every bill. i came home with
less money than i had left with.

the funny part is that when i got back to brazil, everything that had been
difficult before the trip had become easy.

i took a few months to land back into brazil and let go of the anxiety i had
been carrying in the states. a lot of waterfalls and birthday parties cured me
in a way that went further than i expected. i stopped grinding my teeth at
night, and every year since i have grown calmer.

## the shop

recovered, i opened a phone shop at a market in the town where i grew up, and it
went well. i do not remember exactly how long it stayed in that spot, but it was
an interesting stretch of my life.

![the phone shop](/about/phone-shop.jpg)
*the shop*

then i had the brilliant idea of moving it to a better neighbourhood, and we
did a serious renovation at the new address. after the move i never took a
single dollar back out of that company (basically broke). my head was already somewhere else.

![the new address](/about/phone-shop-new.jpg)
*the new address*

i could not explain it at the time, but i wanted to educate myself. boston had
raised questions that the phones and the shop were never going to answer. i
wanted to belong to that city. to sit comfortably on a bench with a book, run in
the park early, walk down newbury street to buy something instead of to work.

with the shop going from bad to worse, life handed me exactly what i wanted. i
went back to boston to rebuild.

![cambridge](/about/cambridge.jpg)
*cambridge*

## 2022

walking to lunch at a brazilian restaurant in everett one day, i made one of the
most resolute decisions of my life: i would dedicate myself to software. it was
a strange thing. from that day on it is all i have done.

that same year i started single, a system for organizing phone repair shops, and
landed a developer job at a company based in dubai. what are the odds!

![back bay again](/about/backbay-2023.jpg)
*back bay again, 2023*

my system sold like water in a desert, and every day it demanded more code, more
marketing, more management. at the company i kept taking on more: i introduced
vue.js as the standard, rewrote the entire framework we used for new projects,
ran research on web3, and started taking part in business decisions more and more. i sold the
shop in brazil and actually became an engineer.

and that is how it went. when i took my eyes off the code, my financial crisis
had passed, i had become an engineer, and i no longer had a shop. i felt better
than i ever had.

the company opened a base in são paulo, brazil and i moved there right away.

![vila mariana, são paulo](/about/sao-paulo.jpg)
*vila mariana, são paulo, 2024*

## the road

after that on-site project i went back to brasília, and with a lot more freedom
i enrolled in a software engineering degree to educate myself formally. i kept
working remotely and running single, which by then had a structure less
dependent on me and on code.

with that freedom i went to see the world with the unworried eyes i had wanted
back when i arrived in boston as a teen. i started going to every kind of show,
museum and fair. i travelled many times without a specific destination. being
able to manage anywhere, plus having the money to do it, turned me into an
observer of the world without prejudice.

i once spent sixty days driving through minas gerais and bahia, staying in each
town for as long as i felt like.

![cachoeira dos cristais](/about/cachoeira-dos-cristais.jpg)
*cachoeira dos cristais, parque estadual do biribiri, diamantina mg*

![cachoeira da sempre-viva](/about/cachoeira-sempre-viva.jpg)
*cachoeira da sempre-viva, parque estadual do rio preto, são gonçalo do rio preto mg*

![lençóis, chapada diamantina](/about/lencois.jpg)
*lençóis, chapada diamantina, bahia*

![serra do cipó](/about/serra-do-cipo.jpg)
*serra do cipó, mg (i almost died that day)*

## 2026

with all of that behind me, i decided to move to the countryside, still in
brasília. today i live forty minutes by car from the city and fifteen kilometres
from the nearest paved road.

it is a small farm with papaya, avocado, guava, jabuticaba, mango, lemon,
orange, tangerine, jackfruit, sugarcane and lychee. there is a garden with
chives, parsley, basil, red chilli, lemongrass, lemon balm and boldo. and my two
dogs, thor and chihiro.

![chihiro](/about/chihiro.jpg)
*chihiro, eighty days old*

![a beetle on the pepper plant](/about/beetle.jpg)
*i do not know what beetle this is, but it lives on my pepper plant*

![thor](/about/thor.jpg)
*thor. yes, he is enormous*

![the house](/about/house.jpg)
*home*

here i have given myself to knowledge more than ever, in my field and also in
literature, music and, of course, the land.

this about is a bit of my professional path, touching my personal one along the
way. at a time when everything is made by AI, i am convinced that what is made
by hand will stand out more than ever. so if you are reading this, it is a
pleasure to share some of what i have done and how i live these days.

september 1st, 2026.