| | Eirik Lysenstoen | Context: I was a student in batch #402 in Oslo for the web developer
Before joining the Le Wagon boot camp I had spent a few months learning to code on my own using books and websites after having absolutely no exposure to programming for my life at age 31. I thought I was making fine progress on my own and I was skeptical of the benefit a boot camp could offer me. My personal reservations about joining was whether it would be worth it, the price tag is not inconsiderable after all. While I do recommend preparing as much as possible (and definitely do the prep-work as thoroughly as you can) to get the most out of your time at a boot camp, the progress I experienced in my learning with le wagon was much greater than what I had been able to achieve on my own.
The great advantage that the Le Wagon has over something like the career routes I tried from codecademy is that the program is designed holistically. What I mean by this is that rather than taking a whole bunch of separate pieces of knowledge (SQL, JS, RUBY etc) and feeding them to you one after another the program is designed with a single end point in mind. While getting started on the program it was hard to see how it would all be used, but when we got to the ruby on rails section of the syllabus it was like a light went on in my head. I could see that not only was I learning how to use rails, but I had already learned everything I needed to understand just how the different pieces of the rails framework fit together. One of my classmates who found the course very challenging in the beginning and to the middle remarked that at the end it was like things started to click into place. I think this is a reflection of a well designed syllabus.
We also got some very valuable experience working in a team on applications. Learning on your own is well and good, if you are able to, but learning the work-flow on github with pushing, pulling and reviewing other’s works is simply impossible to do on your own. For the last parts of the boot camp we got a lot of very useful experience doing this as we took an application from a pitched idea to a finished MVP. I was honestly amazed at what we were capable of creating on our own after such a short time. You can see what we made at www.infitter.net and a demo at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/le-wagon-norway_changeyourlife-learntocode-activity-6724648218480709632-3ny-
For myself I am very happy that I took the boot camp, I met some great people along the way and while there is still a lot to learn the shroud of mystery around coding has mostly been lifted, so that I not only know more, but I am better equipped to find information on my own. I would recommend the Le Wagon boot camp to anyone looking to break into the world of programming. |
