Le Wagon

It’s been almost 4 weeks since I left Barcelona and Le Wagon behind and I am left with some pretty incredible skills and memories that I will carry with me for a very long time. Deciding to spend my summer in Barcelona and at Le Wagon was probably one of the best decisions ever. I was studying my first year at uni as a Business Administration and IT student when I first was introduced to coding. Meanwhile the coding classes I had in uni made me doubt however I would ever be able to code Le Wagon proved me wrong!

The Le Wagon experience is one I would recommend to everyone. Except giving me a new set of skills the bootcamp also gave me a huge confidence boost, knowing that I am now capable of doing something I never thought I would be able to do.

I am so grateful for all of the incredible teachers and staff at the Barcelona campus and also my amazing classmates. Now I am looking forward to learning a lot more and searching for new projects to work on. The first one will be building a website for my fathers company!

Two months straight of lectures, algorithm courses and a variety of programming language, from 9 am to 7 p.m, - wait, did I also mention the homework and self-study ?. That looks like hell, but, actually, it can be the best decision of your life. Well, at least that was mine !

Few months ago I’ve decided to further my education and, at the same time, make a career change after a life in the finance sector. Because why not, after all.. While it’s important to show commitment, sometimes your goals and perspectives change, and you crave for something more meaningful to you. After an intense benchmarking session,  I set my sights on « Le Wagon », got enrolled, passed the tests, and start what would become the rightest call I would ever done in my life.
And let me tell you that this bootcamp lived up to my expectations. Great teaching staff, great teaching method, and a room full of likeminded students/professionals coming from different backgrounds. Now, don’t get me wrong it was not all fun and games. My brain was literally be fried during this bootcamp, but in good way though. They were all about providing an efficient and practical knowledge of the web development world, and that's what I earned. Looking back, I feel empowered and happy that I did invest in myself, that I have done something that was right for me. Something that gave me a real perks in my new job as a freelance Web/App developer.

So stop wondering, entrepreneur, freelancer, and other curious mind of this world if your train goes off the track, pick it up, pick it up…and follow Le Wagon !

I flew out to Bali to cover all of the below in 9 weeks, and designed, pitched and built two working projects. An Airbnb clone, and an idea I had, to utilise APIs in order to discover locations to visit in a new city, displayed via a heatmap 🔥

- JavaScript, jQuery
- Git, GitHub, Heroku
- Ruby and coding basics
- Parsing, Storing, Scraping & API
- Software Engineering (OOP)
- Database & SQL
- Front-End (HTML, CSS, Bootstrap)
- Ruby on Rails

Le Wagon's programme was absolutely fantastic, with a structure that was inclusive and set up to allow all types of learners to excel. The teaching staff were great and always on hand to help should a problem arise, as well as giving well-led lectures on the content within the course.

The course has opened my eyes to the technical world in more ways than I'd have hoped, taught me so much, whilst being acting as an excellent launchpad to an MSc to learn more.

One element of the course I really liked was that the skills were taught to pretty much set up the students to build their own business once they were finished should they want to.

If you're thinking about learning to code I'd highly recommend Le Wagon!

Thanks again!

I had tinkered with basic front-end programming for a while, HTML5 & CSS. As I was building my company from the ground up, I couldn't afford any programmer. So I chose a CMS and taught myself to code basic rendering. But as the months went by, and I started to discover more insights into my consumers' lives, I started to realize that I had nowhere near the ability to push the digital products that had a chance to succeed in the market. As all things started to come together, I chose to terminate my business - for other reasons than my own technical shortcomings obviously - and enrolled in Le Wagon a few months after.

The idea was basically to gain a deeper understanding of the tech universe, i.e. how does one gain a programmer mindset  ? I also wanted to connect with different personalities. I was quite certain that some of the people I was going to meet would have lived different and interesting lives. The idea was to reset my mind and use that school as a stepping stone towards new high.

I was not disappointed. The bootcamp in itself is hard, and even harder for those of us that do not have a deep scientific education. So the first weeks are a-killing. But the program and educational support have achieved near perfection. The curriculum is thought as blocks that will all come together in the future. If you struggle with your challenges in the first days, you are learning a valuable lesson about the programmer's life. Our job is mainly to bring solutions to problems. You cannot take shortcuts. As a programmer you gotta pay your fair share of hustle, sweat and frustration. But keep at it for a few days, and the small joy of overcoming difficulties are gonna compound in your mind and you will find new motivation, as well as new abilities. Teachers and Teaching Assistants @ Le Wagon are great individuals who listen and declutter the path for you - they never do your chores though. If you are good or somewhat already a bit experienced, there are additional challenges that you can complete.

The high point of Le wagon is the last two weeks, when you are associated with 3 of your fellow wagoners to build a real-life web application that is to be presented in front of a live audience of 200+ people. These are intense weeks, as you should make use of everything that you have learned so far. There is teamwork as well, but not the kind you are used to, the kind with everyone one of your teammates being a programmer as well, the kind with git commit, git push and above all git merge conflict. You are talking a new language. You are building something. Your life has changed then and there.

And there is the people also, first and foremost. Let's face it, you are not gonna be a functional developer after ANY bootcamp. To do so you need to rely on a set of likely-minded positive characters and energies. And above all keep coding and growing. It does not matter how good you are or how good you think you are. Le Wagon's highest value proposition is that it gives you the tools and the network to go down this path - should you choose to do so.  During my 9 weeks @ Le wagon, I have blossomed into a new individual, mainly because there are very few moments in your life when you are surrounded by every age group and every character. My advice is to use it as a sandbox for what will come later.

As for me, I am now freelancing on design and code, mainly to have the time to learn dart and flutter. My goal is to release one app a month.

Thank you for reading,
Christophe

Before joining Le Wagon I wanted to learn how to code and make a website but didn't know where to start. Then I found the course in Le Wagon where they say they can teach us how to code and make a website in just 9 weeks. After hearing about this I visited one demo days and I was amazed they were able to make fabulous websites in just 9 weeks. After joining the next batch(#279) I was taught by Amazing teachers. During the morning lectures, they would teach us while clearing any doubts we didn't understand. after lectures, we would be paired up with a classmate to complete challenges. these are pretty hard challenges that help us understand the logic in programming. At the end of the Bootcamp, I have learned a lot so that I can now make a website like twitter or facebook easily. even after finishing the boot camp they let us keep the lectures in a video form so we can come back if we forgot something. Overall this boot camp was very worth it. it helped me be a full stack web developer and helped me gain many skills as a developer.

That cloud looks like duck... sort of... Ooh! But that one looks like a dragon!   I catch myself staring out the window again. The number of times I catch myself is getting out of hand. I sit at the WeWork, twirling my pen, trying to force myself to fill out the brand launch strategy, and I just can’t. I’ve filled out a million before, and now, I just can’t.   I opt to grab a coffee instead, maybe go for a walk, wrap my head around anything else, I’ll figure it out when I get back. It’s another beautiful day in Oregon, and the weather is simply too nice to be spent inside all day. As I walk down the streets, peer in a few shop windows, I can’t shake the feeling something is off. You know those days, where a cloud just hangs over you, there’s nothing wrong in particular, but for the life of you, you just feel crummy.   What’s wrong with me, I’ve literally been described as a human puppy, why am I not happier, why do I feel so off? Seriously, what is wrong with me? I mean I’ve done everything I’ve been expected to do, haven’t I? I went to a great high school, played sports, went to university, even graduated top of my class as an engineer. Oh, if you could only have seen the grin on my mother’s face as I showed her my diploma.   From there I went the management consulting route, opting to flex my business know how. I ended up working a rotational program for the largest beer company in the world. I lived in some of the greatest US cities (LA, NYC, MIA, ATL, DC, PDX) and did some of the most fascinating work (venture capital, brand strategy, sales management, brand launches, etc), all in the alcohol industry. My job was literally to go out and talk to people about alcohol. My nights out were work, and my work was nights out, that’s the dream, right?   I had myself a nice retirement account, had a car, did my own laundry, did my taxes, I even began flossing! All the trademarks of a successful adult, so what was wrong? Why wasn’t this enough?   And it began to dawn, the reason it wasn’t enough was because it wasn’t what I actually wanted. I had been filling out someone’s else’s template for success. And when I took a hard-long look... well... I quit.   And so, I decided to move to Barcelona, a city I had grown to love through my travels. But what would I do when I showed up? So, I began poking around and asking myself, if money were of no object, what exactly what I do?   I’d build things of course, it’s what I’ve always done and what I genuinely enjoyed. But what would be my medium, what would be my canvas, and what would be my brush? Looking back at my classes in university I realized the ones I enjoyed the most, the ones where I’d simply get lost in a state of flow, had always been my computer science classes.   So how could I get back into coding? How could I get a fresh take with a new skill set? And so like most of you, I googled “Best Coding Bootcamps”. Lo, and behold, there was Le Wagon, and even better, a batch in Barcelona would start in July.   Between the intense days of coding, the weekends spent playing on the beach, and the nights sitting out on terezas drinking beer, the summer was over before I knew it. But the skill set I walked away with would empower me.   Now a days I’m working to be a freelance developer while I TA with Le Wagon. It’s not the easiest route by any means, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been before. I finally found the thing that had been eluding me all these years.   For once, I was no longer filling out someone else’s template for my life, I was finally architecting my own path. The leap can be scary, I know, but I promise what’s on the other side can be beautiful as long as you’re willing to put in the work.

I started learning to code on my own a couple of months ago, previously employed as a digital marketing specialist I build a little data pipeline to automate my report. I quickly realize that I was having more fun doing that than building campaigns. When I decided that I wanted to be a developer I didn’t know what the journey would be like, I didn’t have much experience and I knew no one to guide me. I started to gather information about the different bootcamp in Montreal, this is when I discovered Le Wagon. Starting Le Wagon was the first milestone in this adventure that I wanted to start. Le Wagon sure taught me how to code (the teachers are here for you every step of the road to help you understand the key concepts) but the value of doing Le wagon bootcamp go far more beyond that. You learn how to properly develop an idea, prototype the product and develop it with a team. You’ll be surprised by what you can learn and accomplish in just a couple of weeks. Another great value of Le Wagon is its community, a very active and helping community that helps you broaden the perspective of what you can do, I wanted to be a developer, today I am also an entrepreneur and the journey keep going.

Before joining LeWagon Bali, I was working for a strategy consulting firm in Zurich. Most projects were about Digital and Analytics topics, where I realized how much there is to learn in this area. I knew I wanted to study Data Science in my Master, which is why I thought a coding bootcamp would give me a head start and an additional skill. Little did I know that the 9 weeks would give me so much more than that!

In the first few weeks my day usually started at 6am with a 1.5 hour yoga session. At 9am, I had my first fresh coconut and was ready to soak up all the information our teachers would give us in the lessons. After the challenges, I was usually exhausted, but at the live code, full attention is needed to keep up. At the end of the day at around 7.30pm, we would all go for a quick beer and dinner and then drop into bed. This was such an exciting time because each day, I came home with a head full of new things I learned, all in an unbelievable speed. At this point, we were just getting to know each other as a group, and our driver did an amazing job at bringing us all together on exciting trips to beaches, islands and clubs. Good times!

After a few weeks, every piece I learned started to come together like a puzzle. This is the most amazing moment. Building your first app, getting something live on the web, working in a team with other people pushing code on GitHub. You feel like you’re a magician, its FIRE! By now, our batch was one big family, organizing parties and weekend excursions together. We were a very diverse group, ranging from 18 to 45 from all educational, geographical and job-backgrounds, all hanging out together. I think that is amazing and exactly how it should be.

After 7 weeks of hard work, we started to work on our own projects. This is when the real fun but also the real challenge starts. I realized that to be a great coder, you have to be able to do more than just code. Communication is key to a successful project and the biggest challenge was not the ability to do the things but to get a common understanding, vision and a working team together. At the end, this was the most important learning and I was SO proud to see the final result of our hard work.

Overall, LeWagon has been the most empowering experience of my education so far. It gave me the ability to make my ideas reality and showed me that I can learn anything. I will continue improving my current coding skills and, now that I’m programming in R, I can tell that it has been key for me to get the foundation from LeWagon. Last but not least, it gave me a network of amazing alumni, a group of friends I will always be able to visit around the world and nine weeks of pure fun in paradise. Big Thank You to Bali, our wonderful teachers #BOOM and the #Batch253!

My background is in Marketing and Sales. I was freelance for Fahion Brands before Le Wagon including services like consultancy, sales, eCom and BZ developer basically in Barcelona.

 

During the months before my bootcamp I started to investigate and learn to code and I quickly realice it was much more creative and exciting I could expect. So, after some interviews I realice Le Wagon was exactly what I was looking for.

 

I wanted to develop new skills which could enrole me in new an different projects and learn another way of working / living.

I have a friend who hardly recommend me Le Wagon He also wanted to breakthrough his profesional carrier, become a full stack developer and After one year He was there.

 

Le Wagon creates a very good atmosphere. They create an amazing team between TA’s, Teachers and Students. A very different group of people (20 different nationalities), super interesting all focus on same goals and helping eachother to get there.

I’m from Uruguay and originally started my studies in the fields of marketing administration. After getting my Bachelor’s degree I started working in a startup company and saw it grow into a fast-food chain with more than 10 stores. Some years later I started to feel the need to change my career into something that I soon found to be my new passion… coding.

A friend of mine told me about these type of intensive programming courses so I researched for the best ones in Europe and I found Le Wagon. After some research I decided to enroll in Le Wagon Barcelona, so I could also get to know the city.

Two months later I’m starting my freelance career and also diving into teaching, I wouldn’t expect to be able to create the projects that we did in such a short time.

Le Wagon Barcelona not only brought me technical knowledge, but also the experience of developing products in teams, contacts and a lot of new friends. They gave me all the tools to have an awesome and enriching experience, and I’m really grateful that I took it.

It has been a bit under two months since I finished Le Wagon’s full-stack development Bootcamp, and my life has already changed drastically. I have been hired as a junior full-stack engineer and will be moving to Amsterdam for this new adventure.

I can honestly say that Le Wagon’s mantra, “Change your life, learn to code”, could not be better said. This Bootcamp has not only given me the tools needed to change professions, but it has also helped me discover a new passion I can turn into a career.
 
I would like to thank all the teachers and TA’s that made this possible as well as Gonzalo and Gus, who organized an amazing batch. I would also like to thank the Le Wagon network that put me in contact with my new job. My life really has changed by learning to code!