Le Wagon

 I want to take my chance to say thank you to Le Wagon Singapore. My decision to go there to learn how to code is one of the best choices I’ve ever made. I joined part time course for the last six months. The experience was amazing! And the real stars are incredible teachers who always there to help and support. They made sure that the material was well understood and never missed a chance to double check on how are we doing during challenges completion.
Now, after 24 weeks I am not sure if I am going to become a developer, but these weeks definitely changed my life. I will suggest to everyone who ever thought about learning how to code to choose Le Wagon without any hesitation. This school will give you much more than just code understanding but new friends and the greatest community :)

I chose this bootcamp to launch a  new career. And I really liked it !
Le Wagon offers full-time(9weeks) and part-time courses(24weeks).
Le wagon provides you a very good kitt, with videos, tutorials, slides, source code, cheatsheets, etc, that will lead you from 0 to a Ruby on rails  project deployed on a server .
Steps:
  1) Exercices with "complex"Ruby challenges, being familiar with Github. 
  2) db schema design and sql. 
  3) Object-oriented programming. 
  4) Frontend with html, css, bootstrap, and javascript. 
  5)Use of Ruby on Rails, the powerful MVC framework(Model-View-Controller).Authentication,Authorization, building APIS, Deployment on Heroku,testing and many more things will be observed.
  6) 2  projects: a clone of airbnb and  a personal  project.

I attended Le Wagon Melbourne in late 2020. Just wanted to share my experience in case anyone else is considering learning how to code through this bootcamp. Overall, I had a really wonderful experience. As someone who had almost no experience with coding, I'm very satisified with what I was able to learn in just 9 weeks. A large part of this has to do with the course structure. The content progresses in a very thoughtful way - every day builds upon the previous one enough to challenge you (and you will be challenged!), but not enough to make you feel completety lost. The bootcamp has a way of showing you how to do things the "hard way" first, before revealing the short-cuts or "easy way" of accomplishing something. While I found it a little bit frustrating at the time, this technique helped me to deeply understand what was going on behind the scenes. 

Looking back, I was given a very solid foundation in understanding the fundamentals of programming, and how to tackle difficult problems, instead of just learning short-cuts to build a flashing product. Once you finish, you'll probably be applying for junior developer roles and a big part of those applications are coding challenges. In my experience, these challenges became very manageble after the bootcamp - but would have been impossible for me before!

Besides the content, the Le Wagon team in Melbourne are fantastic. They really take care in selecting friendly, accepting and genuine people. I've made so many friends through my batch, the teachers, and even wider alumni network in Melbourne. The company is really big on community and hosts many events and meet-ups both during and post-bootcamp. If finding like-minded people and networking is important to you I'd definitely recommend Le Wagon!

My main goal to join Le Wagon was to learn more about programming to better communicate with our in-house developers. However, after joining the program I realized there was much more to it than just learning how to code. All the other students and especially the teachers brought amazing energy each day and really gave motivation me do learn and work as hard as I could during class and in between.
Thanks to the part time class I was able to attend the course without too much disruption of my normal work life and while it wasn't always easy to do both at the same time, I would definitely do it again.

This was an amazing journey! With knowledge of web development, I wanted to specialize in Data Science. After trying to learn on my own I enrolled at Le Wagon. It was an amazing decision. The program is fast-paced but so exciting! The curriculum is built such as you are never lost. The staff is always there to help you when you get stuck! We've learned so much in such a short period of time.
I would recommend the Le Wagon Bootcamp to anyone who is wanting a change of career, looking to upskill themselves or simply wanting a challenge.
When you enter Le Wagon you enter an entire community you can rely on!

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 :)

Please feel free to reach out to the school directly and its alumni. We are always happy to talk you through the good and the challenges we found along the way.

As a complete beginner I would never have imagine reaching the level at which I am at now. In fact, my experience at Le Wagon was more than just hardships and challenges but rather a social and inspiring bootcamp where the learnings calls for fraternity and cooperation.
I am not a born computer programmer but I’ve grasped the fundamentals. I am not especially interested in becoming a programmer but I am now able to understand the functioning of a website as well as its features.  Finally, I am not the smartest learner but the practice tools, methodology and teaching is flawless.
My two months at Le Wagon’s facility was like taking a fresh bowl of pure air, totally disregarding this unsettling period

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. :)

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 😇

The overall experience was great ! Knowledgeable teachers, always there to help during the hard times, curriculum is set up to pass you through the most important things you need to know, life time access to KITT the platform where u can re watch all the lectures and have access to so so many great resources. The only regret i have is not taking this step earlier and perhaps not preparing better before the bootcamp started. It is not easy, but what the majority of people saying is true, you get what you put in.
So what are you waiting for ? Learn to code ! Change your life :)

Le Wagon Istanbul was a life changing experience that could help me to change my career as well. It was intense, friendly and rewarding! Finding Le Wagon came at the right time for me. I wanted to learn how to code so that I could improve my work-life balance, and especially so I could work from home. At the time I was working long hours in the hospitality industry, and I felt it was time to make a change. The choice of bootcamp format for me was perfect, because all the other courses I saw took way too much time…and I wanted to learn quickly. After graduating, looking back, I think I made great progress. I was remote for almost the whole bootcamp, which is why the buddy-system of paired-programming was even more important for me. It was hard at first, but it was really helpful to be able to interact with the other students. I learned how to help them when they were stuck, and in return they helped me. Team-work was especially important during Project Weeks (when we built a new web app together). I met amazing team-mates and learned a lot from their analytical skills. Projects Weeks were the highlight for me and I’ll miss them the most. It was really exciting having the freedom to solve problems by ourselves and code real solutions in a real web app. This is when my confidence grew the most, we were really gelling as a team. Since graduating I’ve made use of Le Wagon’s amazing global community to reach out to alumni in different cities and brainstorm about their progress. It’s really exciting to be able to connect with other people internationally, especially in London where I’m looking for a job. Career Week – in Week 10 – was very helpful in terms of employment, because we received a ton of information, informing us on the different kinds of jobs out there and how to prepare for interviews. It gave me more confidence! Now I’ve learned how to search for answers, how to code independently and I’ve developed my skills to such an extent that I feel confident I can keep learning and improving by myself using what I learned at Le Wagon.

I was proudly part of the batch 568 in Le Wagon Milan. It has been a really exiting journey, where I found teachers with a lot of knowledge and most important a real passion for teaching and coding. I feel every day of the bootcamp that the team of Le Wagon Milan really wanted to make the students understand deeply all the concepts (and they reach always this objective ;) ) 
The bootcamp is intense but with really good human environment. The last weeks of the bootcamp are made for developing an app in small groups, this was amazing to experience coding in a team with all the best practice involved ;).
After the bootcamp teachers and the driver of the bootcamp are always available to mentor you about your level and for suggestions about your next steps in your career path. And not less important as an alumni you have access of all the courses and the community of Le Wagon for-ever.

If you are looking for a Bootcamp that not only "teach" but also "mentor" you, Le Wagon is definitely a good choice! 

Thanks Le Wagon Team Milan!

At the start of 2021, I took the plunge to learn Web Development full-time for 9 weeks at Le Wagon Singapore, after 2 years of trying to learn it on the side through free online courses.

My instructors, being experienced software developers and teachers, were great at breaking down concepts simply, clearly and memorably, and explaining how best practices would prevent sticky situations in the real world. They were really approachable and intentional in creating a safe environment to ask questions, make mistakes and grow, and my peers were collaborative and highly motivated too. We had a high teacher:student ratio of 1:4 (including the TA), which ensured we got timely help when we needed it.

On top of that, the syllabus was well-structured such that I could feel my progress every single day by simply trusting the process. The daily exercises, flashcards and live code tested my understanding and recall to solidify my learning. Besides code, we learned important industry practices by doing - applying Test Driven Development, Continuous Deployment and Agile Project Management in our 2 final projects.

The bootcamp also opened my eyes to the world of start-ups as we pitched our product ideas to actual VCs (venture capitalists), went through a product design sprint and demo-ed our MVPs (minimum viable products). My instructors challenged us to implement realistic features and worked with us through hurdles, so that we built 2 apps we can be really proud of. More importantly, I now have a good foundation upon which I can continue growing as a fullstack developer.

I came to Le Wagon Tokyo with the aim to commit to learning to code without sacrificing a full-time job. I have tried to self-study while working a couple years back with online courses but none would stick longer than a couple weeks. I finally took the leap and joined the 24-month part time course - one of the best decisions I've made. Attending classes and working in team to ship a complete web application product while working full-time was not easy. I sometimes heard me saying, "why am I doing this to myself?"! It helped tremendously when our teachers and TAs at LW Tokyo were extremely flexible and patient in accommodating our needs - switching smoothly to full remote due to the pandemic mid way, staying back to make sure we find a solutions to make our codes work, explaining things over... And it all made sense on the Final Project Demo Day when my team and I presented our product to more than 100 people and someone said they would like to test and use it! I took from LW Tokyo not only hands-on experience with web development and shipping a product, but also an incredible global alumni community where I can come for career advice for different countries, technical questions, inspiring entrepreneurial alumni - a community that I'm now proud to say I'm a part of.

After I was placed on furlough over the summer I decided it was time to evaluate my career in events and consider what I wanted work to be like in the future.

I've always had a keen interest in web development and startups so the course at Le Wagon seemed ideal. 

From the first day, I knew it was a good decision and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

The course can be very challenging at times, but it's also highly rewarding and I would recommend it to anyone considering a career change or upskilling.

Due to Covid, my batch was completely remote and initially, I was a little disappointed, however, it quickly became clear that it comes with a lot of advantages like having a home setup with multiple screens, not losing time to commuting and being able to hop into a zoom room with a teacher in a matter of moments.

If you're considering it, please do go for it.
my only regret is not doing it sooner!