Le Wagon

Before starting at Le Wagon I had just graduated from the University of Southampton in Maths. After a year of half heartedly applying to grad schemes I didn’t want and trying to figure what I did want, I came across codecademy a free online course designed to teach you the basics of programming. I loved it and needed more! After some research a career in web development was the plan! I did not however want to spend the next 3 years at uni again… and thats when my research led me to Le Wagon.

Over the 9 weeks of the coding bootcamp we were trained to think like programmers through various exercises, had lectures and live code sessions every day (material which is available to alumni forever). The curriculum is well planned and consistently updated with a logical flow. The teachers were friendly and with ‘no question is a silly question’ attitude which to me was extremely comforting.
If you’re reading this, then you are wondering how this course has so many positive reviews: after completion, this just seems natural. My enjoyment was also mirrored by my peers who were all in the same boat, different back stories but all with the eagerness to learn. We are now part of a community of alumni where everyone helps each other.

With but 9 weeks of coding experience, my team and I successfully designed and developed a Facebook chatbot with a web application (www.voyagr.co.uk). The project we built was not something I could have imagined and something I am extremely proud of! Anyone who is prepared to embark on a 10 hour day, meeting like minded people and learning a LOT I thoroughly recommend Le Wagon!

My gut feeling during university was that there was some spark within me missing. I studied economics and management but it never truly captivated me or made me motivated to go on to learn more. I knew my real passion was somewhere out there but yet to be found. After graduating, I got bored of the UK and flew out to Amsterdam to work within consumer electronics. During this spell, I had a lot of contact with new start ups trying to promote their new tech products and could see the hard work but enjoyment in their eyes building it all. All this talk about software engineering, product design, programming got me very curious.

Then I found Le Wagon, a 9 week bootcamp which would take a total rookie and transform him into a confident developer with the tech tools to make ideas become a reality. I learned an incredible range of skills and really demonstrated this through our UniTixHub web-app (a hassle free solution of uni students exchanging tickets) which was a pleasure to demo at Google Campus. This has inspired me to continue learning, starting with React & Redux. But just as importantly, the friends and network I made along the way was the icing on the cake to confidently say it was one of the best experiences of my life.

If you are looking for a change in career or simply just curious, please don’t hesistate to join Le Wagon, I can promise you will not regret it!

In a nutshell – Le Wagon, London is a fantastic coding bootcamp - I highly recommend it.

Prior to joining the January 2018 batch, I had been working in sustainability consulting for several years. But I needed a change and having an interest in tech startups and an ambition to launch a business, I went part time to pursue an idea. Soon I had launched a Wordpress site to gauge market interest and start solving the problem. The feedback was OK but ultimately it brushed over the pain and didn’t adequately offer a solution. It needed more, I needed to iterate the site but where next? I didn’t know a great deal about any of the tech stacks and even if I had the money to spend how was I meant to brief developers? How would I know I was getting value for money? It soon became clear that my lack of knowledge here was a barrier. So, I researched resources and started some lessons on freecodecamp. Don’t get me wrong, their resources are good but it was slow-going for me and I didn’t feel I had enough direction. I felt I needed to properly dive-in to jump start progress!

So I checked out a few bootcamps. After attending a couple of events from Le Wagon, including attending the previous batch’s demo day and having a conversation with Ed (the guy who runs things in London), I felt this was the right bootcamp for me.

I wasn’t wrong – it was a challenging 9 weeks but it was definitely worth it. Structured lessons every morning and lots of practice for the rest of the day – tiring stuff. But the teachers and teaching assistants really do help and are there for you if you are seriously stuck (it will happen)! The structure of the course was great and even though things in the tech industry change quickly the teaching team clearly adapts lessons to accommodate for them. In the last three weeks you put it all in to practice with your own projects - for the creative and entrepreneurial this is fantastic!

In those final 2 weeks, with the help of two great classmates, my site was rebuilt (www.oscapes.tech). Rebuilt is the wrong word … it’s more than that, it’s dynamic and is built on a Ruby on Rails tech stack that I understand, know how it works and can change myself! I met great people (teachers and classmates included), learnt a lot and had a great time! I couldn’t ask more from the course and look forward to the journey ahead!

This time last year I was a ski instructor.

In some ways it was exactly the dream I had imagined, I loved the town I lived in, I loved the people I met and I loved the vast mountain scenery. What I didn’t love so much were the uncertain hours, the ridiculously low pay and the repetitive work. After a couple of years in Canada I resolved to start a real career and turned to something I had always had an interest in, tech.

I started my journey alone, doing online coding courses via resources like CodeCademy and Udemy, but I soon found that I wasn’t really absorbing the knowledge. I felt like I was following instructions and copying code rather than understanding the reasons behind what I was doing. As a result, I took the decision to fast-track my learning by applying to a coding bootcamp. Finding Le Wagon wasn’t hard, googling “best coding bootcamp in London” brought up a number of ranking and comparison sites and they all ranked Le Wagon #1, having just finished the nine week course myself, it’s easy to see why.

The first week is a bit of a culture shock, you come to realise the magnitude of what you don’t know and start to think that there is no way you can gain any meaningful understanding in the nine weeks you have here. Then, slowly, things begin to fall into place, you start to understand how Ruby works and the potential power it has. This understanding builds day on day, week on week until all of a sudden you find yourself with an extensive knowledge, and more importantly, understanding, of Ruby’s inner workings. After this you start to learn about front-end development, with HTML, CSS and Javascript before jumping into the rails framework and seeing everything you have learned come together into a cohesive end result.

The final two weeks were the most enjoyable of the nine, pitching ideas and splitting into teams to build your own apps was an awesome experience. I was part of a team of four which built a facebook chatbot and associated rails app called Voyagr which provides tailored travel inspiration. In week one I would never have believed it possible that I could create something so complex, but by week seven I was itching to put my hard earned knowledge to the test and my confidence was sky high.

Throughout the nine weeks you are surrounded by teachers and teaching assistants ready to further explain the finer points of the days topic as well as provide a helping hand debugging your code. These are the people who make Le Wagon truly special, their ability to confer understanding is second to none and is the reason why I have learned in nine weeks what would have taken my years to learn by myself.

Having finished batch #123 I have started learning Node and ReactJS at a pace which far outsrips my first forays into the coding world. This is something which Le Wagon teaches almost as a byproduct; the knowledge and mindset which allows you to go on from the course and further your understanding in whatever direction you choose. The resources Le Wagon supplies after the course has finished coupled with an very active 2000+ alumni network means that even though I have finished the nine week bootcamp I don’t feel like I’ve finished with Le Wagon, quite the opposite in fact, I feel like I’m just starting.

After finishing at Cambridge University and getting job offers I was not particularly keen on, I decided to take a year to just  do all the things I had put off and at the top was learning how to code because I wanted the ability to build my ideas for cool products and services.
 
Before I jumped on Le Wagon 9-week intensive coding bootcamp, I researched all the coding resources. I came across free sites such Codecademy and sites like Udemy that have top quality content at an affordable price.

I also checked out loads of youtube tutorials and got to grips with the jargon but came to the conclusion that for me, I needed to throw myself in the deep end and JUST DO IT if I ever wanted to jumpstart my goal because I learn best when there is pressure and lots of things to get done. Otherwise, I would waste precious time and energy trudging along. This is why I ultimately decided to go the coding bootcamp-route and London is amazing for this as there are so many options for various goals.

I came across General Assembly and attended their events, I liked their weekend courses (you can do front end and back end separate at a slow pace) and the intensive option ('come at me bro'- pace) which I leaned towards. Then I got in touch with Makers Academy and they did the intense approach while hooking you up to a paid gig at the end of it which I thought was pretty cool. However, it was when I came across Le Wagon and saw these fun-loving people with pure passion going after their unique goals that I knew this is where I was going to learn the best because I loved the vibe and the genuine camaraderie of the people. Most places are very transactional, which is fair enough because it's a business but that's not Le Wagon. It genuinely is a community and people gravitate towards like-minded peers/instructors to further their goals. Yeah, you pay for the course but you quickly realize that it's so much more than just a course, it is a way of approaching the tech sector from problem solving to networking to exploring cool ideas to figuring out where you want to be and how best to get there as so many experienced devs, product managers, founders/cofounders are regularly invited to talk about their experiences and field questions at Le Wagon's working space. Seriously, how cool is Le Wagon that you can code all day getting, getting stuck, fixing the bug(s) and in the evening you are sat in front of legends asking all your serious/silly questions to someone that has done what you want to do or think you want to do? I absolutely loved it and learned so much that would have taken me months if not a few years to cover through simply asking the right questions to the right people. It's priceless (it's 6.5 but you know what I mean).
I am currently done with bootcamp and got to work on one of my ideas to solve a problem that has been nagging at me for years. I will have a market of one so things are already looking up!
If you want to just learn how to code, build a business, meet cool people who chase their goals proactively and have deep meaningful conversations over lunch/drinks…. I recommend Le Wagon London without hesitation. 

Le Wagon Bali is the best place to learn programming! I attended the bootcamp without any prior coding experience and after only 2 months of the bootcamp, my team and I successfully built a working prototype of RunDB (https://www.run-db.com). I never thought this would be possible before coming to Bali!
A little bit about myself…
After 4 years of working in sales and business development, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and launched my own startup Atletude. Without any coding knowledge, I could only count on my developer friends to help me code my web app. But after a while I felt I was limited from contributing to my project and could not properly communicate my ideas with my developers. So, I decided to quit my job and learn to code.
What can you expect from the bootcamp?
You will find that the first few weeks of the bootcamp are built to be very challenging as it is a series of days of fast paced and intensive learning of new concepts. However, don't be worried because there is more than enough resources to see that you pull through. The teaching community will provide one-to-one time if you need and the unique pedagogy encourages you to learn with the fellow students and you are never left alone. Then slowly, you will start to see how all the concepts you learn come together and as if by magic you will start coding! By the final 2 weeks of the camp, you will be able to design and develop a working web app and work as a team like developers do. This rapid progress completely exceeded my expectation of what the bootcamp can deliver in such a short time! In the end, I learnt five new languages and understood how developers think, design, work together and create web apps which was exactly what I came to to Bali to learn.
And why did I choose Le Wagon Bali of all places?
I was trying to decide which city of Le Wagon would help my learning experience the most. In the end, I chose Bali and brought along my wife and my 2 month old baby. And so far, it was the best decision of my life! Imagine surfing in the morning, coding in the day and enjoying beautiful sunsets on the beach or in one of the many cool restaurants in Canggu with your new friends at the bootcamp - this is just regular life at Le Wagon Bali and not an exaggeration of what you can expect. On top of the relaxing environment to help me learn to code, the extremely well organised camp and the extra activities also enriched my experience. We were even brought on a boat trip to nearby islands and given interesting talks and workshops about the tech world. And did I mention the amazing morning coffee?!? The whole experience was so amazing that, and I know it doesn’t really make sense, I would love to do the same bootcamp all over again 

I don't think that sharing my story is quite relevant. However, I will make a little summary of what I liked during the bootcamp and what I didn't so that if you didn't apply for Le Wagon yet you can have a precise idea of how things works there.

So, Le Wagon is composed of two main parts: the Kitt platform and the Teachers. Kitt gather the courses, the exercises and some resources. Your access to Kitt start the first day of the bootcamp and never ends, which means that when Kitt is updated with for example new courses, you will be able to get them even if your bootcamp session is finished, which is GREAT. 
Then there are the Teachers. They are going to help you learn coding all the while having fun. Every morning, you're going to have a 2-hour course on something new with one of them. 
During the afternoon, you're going to work on a bunch of exercises that correspond to the lesson you got earlier. If you have some difficulties you can get help by asking to your buddy of the day or by sending a message to the teacher through Kitt. At the end of the day, the Teacher is going to do the correction of the exercises. Also, if during the day there is something that you still didn't understood you can re-watch the course on Kitt.

Personally, I loved this organization. The only thing I was disappointed about was that if you killed all the exercises of the day, there is nothing to do until the correction.
Nevertheless, the exercises are interesting and the courses are very clear. I learned much more than I expected. It was a great experience.

Le Wagon program fullstack: 100% approved.

Nine weeks seems like such a short time. But nine weeks is all you need when you are at Le Wagon. You will learn how to build a website, make it look pretty and be proud of what you’ve achieved.

Personally it’s more than I can say from my degree and I spent much more time and money on it. If you are considering a change in career or the start of a new one I think this is the way to go.

I didn’t try other bootcamps but I find it difficult to believe I could have found one better. I was working in a career unsuited for my personality and this fit like a glove and gave my a taste for a totally new field.

Don’t miss out!

Prior to starting my MBA at INSEAD i wanted to learn computer programming in order to start a business. I tried for 6-8 weeks to learn ruby and JavaScript with a book and various online programmes without much success. Fed up with my lack of progress, I applied to LeWagon and started two weeks later in Rio de Janeiro. The course exceeded my expectations by far. This is for the following reasons: 1.) incredibly well though out curriculum that is constantly updated and that has a very good logical progression, 2.) daily classes consisting of 90 min lectures, hours and hours of exercises with the help of the teacher and mentors and 90 minutes of live coding at the end of the day, 3.) incredibly attentive teachers with an unlimited level of patience, 4.) a final project that allows you to apply your coding skills in real life. My team built a web app for a social enterprise called troveko, which we pitched at the demo day. The course thus combines both coding and business skills.      I would wholeheartedly recommend the course. 

Le Wagon Tokyo in one word: great. I learned a tremendous amount and it was made fully evident on demo day with so much positive feedback. People were genuinely impressed with what we could do. It’s the type of program where you really get what you put in: if you are serious about becoming a developer, you can definitely become one. I am now working as a Rails developer and continuing my projects from Le Wagon, so evidently I am very pleased with everything that came from the experience. 
Our drivers Sylvain and Paul were also consistently great. They provided lots of great resources, events and networking opportunities which really made a big difference. They are clearly well immersed in the tech community in Tokyo.
I feel a strong sense of community, and I look forward to contribute to it in every way I can.

Before I joined the Le Wagon Tokyo I worked for eight years for a number of Fortune 500 companies in a Corporate Finance environment. I never coded or had any programming experience before, and to come away at the end of camp with the ability to understand how to build an application from product design and conception to full-working production online was unbelievable and invigorating!

All of the Tokyo staff were so impressive and accomplished, it inspires you to want to do more for yourself.

Having continued access to Le Wagon resources as an alumni afterwards is so beneficial. Through the Le Wagon Tokyo experience, I was able to land a new job as Chief Operating Officer of an established startup overseeing development. I am now on a course to a new life and career path in Japan and this was much more than I ever imagined to happen!

Entrepreneur for almost a decade prior to attending Le Wagon, I' had been wanting to code for years, until I sold and closed both projects I was busy with, clearing up the precious 9 weeks I needed for the bootcamp.

It was a blast.

I loved the experience, the people, the new opportunities.

I now freelance as a full stack web developer and I teach coding at Le Wagon and other communities in Copenhagen where I'm located, but also in Paris, Berlin etc.

Le Wagon truly changed my life.