Respond to a Review

I attended LeWagon Bootcamp in Dubai l. It is a great Learning experience. The course content and curriculum is well designed, the kitt platform is very useful, and moreover the teachers are very knowledgeable and have very good teaching skills. The course management is also very helpful. One thing is worth mentioning that this course is mostly focused on Ruby language, which is much easier and understanble than Java Script, but not as popular. In terms of job prospects, LeWagon is doing its best to support your job search, but you have to realize that the location has its own job market habits and preference, such as most emoloyers in this region requires experience. Overall I strongly recommend to attend the course if you have an interest and at least some capabilities for coding, it is also important to do the preparation work before the bootcamp.

I joined Le Wagon with a view to change my career as the events industry has been suffering a lot this last year. Technology has been disrupting so many industries so I wanted to use my creativity to find a place in the world of technology. Having never coded before I was a little nervous and apprehensive to start this new journey. I had tried to do another Bootcamp before but it was a lot less hours (Around 90) and the teacher was not supportive/ didn’t offer 1-2-1 help as promised outside of the lecture. After being severely disappointed I decided to take the plunge with LE WAGON as the lessons would be in person (instead of Zoom) and so I could ask the teacher directly about anything I wanted clarifying or assistance on. Charlotte the driver is very friendly and gives off an infectious energy, making you feel welcome and at home. This was especially nice for our students who had flown over from abroad and away from their families. Rayan was a very calm teacher and helpful at giving suggestions, instead of giving you the answers straight away. This was good because he really wanted you to think about things until you reached that ‘lightbulb moment’ of understanding. Tariq is very enthusiastic and pushes you to find your way. It’s a challenging process and you do have to give it all you have. He was especially helpful when using diagrams to visually demonstrate concepts to make them easier to understand. It’s crazy how much you learn in just 9 weeks! I enjoyed meeting everyone and learning how to work with all different people. Patience and respecting others contributions is very important. The group project at the end is a joint effort and a little piece of all of you go into it which is why it’s successful :)

Hi folks, it’s been about a month since my 9-week full-time full-stack coding bootcamp with Le Wagon Singapore has ended. Thus, I thought I’d share some thoughts on the experience for folks curious or wondering whether they should embark on this journey some time in their lives as well 😉 FYI it will all be in structured bullet points for other OCD ex-consultants out there. Background & Motivations Prior to joining, I was a product manager in Shopee/Seamoney for 3 years. Had always felt inadequately prepared to take on more technical tasks like opining on required API fields, microservices architectures and debugging API JSON replies Had taken one Intro to Python course in college but couldn’t quite make the mental connection on going from “executing code in my black ugly terminal” to “making a pretty website” (I later learned that there are many uses for coding, and web development is just one of them, e.g. data science is another) Had desires to “start-up” after the bootcamp, so thought learning to code would be useful for either building my own MVP or being better at hiring developers (at least at the early stages without a CTO to help me) Initial Expectations Going to be kinda intense (but I would handle it as it comes…) Lectures for half a day then coding for the other half (in reality it was more like a 20/80 split) Excited to meet non-Shopee people who have interests and backgrounds outside of e-commerce or financial services Ruby should be easy right? Not sure how it is different from Rails but they sound “same same but different” First 2 Weeks: Intro to Ruby Le Wagon blew through my Intro to Python college course syllabus in 1 week. Thereafter I became very scared Le Wagon blew through Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) in the subsequent week. I was officially scared shitless 🙀 I began to realize not a single person in the bootcamp had not prepared themselves at least semi-adequately before joining the bootcamp. Nobody left standing after the 2nd week seemed like a “first time programmer” and had at least been self-learning to code for a while beforehand, myself included technically (Le Wagon does have mandatory Ruby and Javascript prep work before you join the bootcamp but I still felt everyone had prepared themselves above and beyond the 30–40 hours prep work) Next n-th Weeks: Database/SQL, Frontend Development, Intro to Rails Some random moments remembered amidst the blur of 010101010101010… Why do I have to manually write everything into this .csv file? Is coding supposed to be this hard??? I just want to save my work in the database. I have to write code just to save it?? — low ROI Okay at least SQL is easy to pick up. I like this language — high ROI Every day is so hard… but some days are better than others (yay front end!! I finally have something pretty to look at) — some ROI Okay so I am going to go home, review my Le Wagon flashcards for the day, and study the next day’s lecture every night before I sleep, because I know I will absorb better the next morning if I am not seeing the material for the very first time — high ROI *the next day* This is still so hard and almost everyone gets it but me… but it’s okay to not be okay (alright so studying the night before was more like medium ROI, but still worth it) What is an MVC model? Is this what they use in Shopee? *proceeds to text an ex-Shopee developer furiously* Wow is Rails black magic? Do I have to do anything by myself now? (with great power comes great responsibility and magical bugs.. and you have no idea why they appear because you did not write Rails and barely understand how it works under the hood) Final 2 Weeks: Rails FTW Wow, I built this single 3-model app myself!? https://caromistercocktail.herokuapp.com/ A team comprising of myself and 2 other coursemates made this after struggling on using GitHub together for 2 days: https://welovegrowing.herokuapp.com/ (😮 did we really make this?) Same team composition also gave birth to: http://incast-fm.herokuapp.com/ (👊 we are rocking this~) OMG I can code full-stack now??? (apparently so… 🤪 DEMO DAY!!) Watch our demo day here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3iyX9j1hFE Post-Bootcamp Been working on actually starting up; talking to loads of founders/investors/people in the mental health space (that’s what I’m currently looking at) Building Poke Escape by the side with the ex-Shopee developer I was texting furiously about MVC (Poke Escape is a reverse game scenario where you are the Pokemon trying to escape them pesky Pokemon trainers, instead of the usual “catch ’em all” mandate from the trainers’ POV) Wow I can still code!! I still have my superpowers post-bootcamp 🥰 But I have nobody to help me debug now… I miss my instructors Closing Thoughts So now if you ask me, did I achieve all my personal goals through this bootcamp? The long and short of it is like any classic consultant would tell you is, “yes and no”: (i) “Yes”, I am a lot more comfortable looking at APIs and JSON strings now, but “No” if I were to hypothetically rejoin the Shopee product team, I still do not think I would have that technical aptitude / interest to work on the details of a microservices architecture like some of my ex-colleagues were (hey, we all have our fair share of strengths and weaknesses) (ii) “Yes”, I can make a (kinda) pretty website and build my own MVP. But “No” I honestly don’t think I would build my own website/MVP at the end of the day because of the present day proliferation of low or no-code products in the market out there, e.g. Wix and Bubble. And when things start getting serious.. well then… “hello wanna stop working on Poke Escape and be my CTO?” (iii) “Yes” I would probably care a lot more about how developers I’m about to hire think about writing clean code and collaborating with others, but “No” I still have no clue on how to ace a technical interview and am definitely not qualified to judge their technical prowess just by assessing their public Github code repos So then given the above, would I still recommend someone to learn to code? 100% YES (but go at your own pace because it is a real commitment). Le Wagon’s tagline is “Change your life, learn to code”. Not going to lie (those who know me personally know I’m very honest), it’s not just a tagline — definitely learn to code at some point because in my experience, it will change the way you think about the world. In fact, I have two personal analogies on what learning to code is like. (i) Learning to code is like learning science for the first time but for the digital world. I almost felt like a kid that had grown up knowing how to walk and swim and jump my entire life (“yay I just bought something on Shopee!”) but never having learned the technicalities or science behind it (“the frontend client will now go through the router in Rails to go to the right controller / controller action to retrieve the right information from the database to be calculated and returned to the user in the right View” *full disclaimer that this absolutely does not represent Shopee’s tech stack or architecture at all*). Extending that analogy further, having done this bootcamp doesn’t mean that I am suddenly a “computer scientist” — just like how one cannot be a quantum physicist after having just taken Physics 101 in college. But it does mean I have the fundamentals and the confidence to pursue the next level of knowledge if I so choose to. Does that make sense? (ii) Learning to code is like to learning to cook — useful to know at any level and especially under COVID times. You may learn just well enough to cook noodles/rice (me from Intro to Python times), or prep a basic home cooked meal under 30-minutes (that’s where I think I am now), or become a real home amateur chef (aspirations 💪), or turn pro (personally not for me, but 80% of my coursemates were aspiring full-time developers so power to them!). Bottomline is that it’s nice to be able to cook and feed yourself even if you could theoretically do takeout or order Grab delivery for every single meal Finally, for those asking themselves whether they should join a coding bootcamp vs self-learn, personally it was just a personal choice suited to my own… undisciplined enough circumstances. IMO the true value of this bootcamp and why you learn faster than self-learning lies in: (i) A very tried and tested structured syllabus so you do not get distracted (ii) The ability to ask your instructors/teaching assistant for help at any time and MULTIPLE times a day (we had 3 instructors/TAs, so teacher-student ratio was like 3:1 for our small class of 10) → cannot stress the importance and privilege of doing this enough (iii) The ability to pair program with your daily assigned buddy and bounce ideas / get a fresh pair of eyes to review your code when you get stuck → a very realistic scenario when you are a full-time developer as well (d) Real-life projects you get to choose to work on so you build the confidence to go forth and give life to your own pet projects (for reference, on our Demo Day all 3 teams had worked on vastly different themes. Our project was a B2B private podcasting app, another team made a B2C e-commerce makeup app, another team made a CRM-ish app for migrant workers in SG) Needless to say, I am changed forever 😇

Le Wagon provided me with everything I needed to become a Data Scientist. Lead teachers, teaching assistants and drivers were really kind, helpful and proficient when it came to providing guidance and solutions to the different challenges we had to face throughout the Data Science bootcamp. Plus, the Le Wagon community is also supportive and collaborative with every student or alumni. I would totally recommend this school.

Le Wagon is the best choice that I have ever made in my life until now with my career. I was scared, with thousands of doubts with the program and with myself. Would i be able to make it? I had studied Tourism, I definitely not came from this world. But finally I had decided to get on board. From the very first moment I had the support from the teachers, from my batch, and from all the material that they give to you from the beginning. When we finished the campus, we could not believe all we have done, from where we have started and how we finished developing two amazing apps all by ourself. Almost 2 months of that, I am now making my firsts steps as Frontend dev in a very important company. I cant believe it, this is just the beginning! If you are in doubt, just do it, it depends on you to change your life and learn to code. :)

I attended the part-time course over the last six months at Le Wagon Buenos Aires. The overall experience was great! Teachers and all the staff are brilliant and supportive, always there to help during the hard times. I highly recommend studying at Le Wagon.