Ironhack

My experience at Ironhack was one I will never forget. Ironhack pushed me to my limits like no other class or school l have attended. At times I felt like it was just all too much but would constantly tell myself that it will pay off at the end. Eight weeks straight of getting your hands dirty and setting yourself up for errors over and over again, just to realize at the end that you forgot one letter on your line of code. It wasnt the easiest thing I have ever signed up for but I am glad I did it, I am glad I kept pushing myself everyday and studied even on the weekends, It brought out a side of me that I have never seen.

Nizar(Teacher) and Josh (Teachers Assistant) were the best teachers anyone could ask for. They were accessable throughout the day even after class and on weekends. They did their absolute best to explain the problem that we were having on our assignments. They walk around and check that you have completed the exercises before moving on to the next slide/presentation to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Ariel, the owner balanced us out when we were fried from the content we had learned throughout the week, he kept us motivated and gave us therapy to make sure that we kept pushing. Alia (marketing manager) made sure that at the end all of our LinkedIn profiles and resumes were styled perfect, she also set us up with mock interviews which I learned so much from and I cant thank her enough for that.

Overall, I cant take anything away from Ironhack, they exceeded all of my expectations. It wasnt easy but then again it is not meant to be easy. They are going to challenge you day in and day out until you really get an understanding of things. If I had the chance to do it all over again I would, I am glad I stuck around and accomplished what I have wanted to do pretty much since I graduated high school and that is to become a developer.

I finished Ironhack course some months ago and I would like to share the amazing experience.

I suppose that many of you that are reading this are in the same situation I was some months ago. I will briefly detail my background so you can understand why I went to Barcelona to make the iOS Bootcamp.

 Chapter 1: My experience before Ironhack

I was born in Palma del Río, a town between Córdoba and Seville and since I was young I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, a Computer Science Engineer (that was once I realize I wouldn’t go very far practicing sport’s…).

Since I began my Bachelor degree in Engineering in Seville I had clear that I was passionate about mobile projects and even more if they were related to education or sports.

Since my first year at university I tried to find courses related with apps / education and sports, but the only ones I found were about J2ME and an E-Learning Master. When I finished my degree I started working for a consultant firm in Seville and at the same time I get enrolled in a Master Degree about mobile apps. After that, I began working in several iOS and Android projects.

My first professional challenge as a freelance was an App for the European Cinema Festival hosted in Seville and there I realized I needed to strengthen my skills in IOS. In November 2013 I started searching in Google for iOS courses but none of them convinced me. I also entertained the possibility of going abroad, but as I wasn’t able to afford it, I thought that self-training was the best option.

 Due to the large amount of work I had in my first activity and the subsequent as freelance, I had very few time to to self-train. Therefore, I started to search again at the beginning of 2015. And then "voilá!!": I found a super-intensive course of eight weeks in Madrid to develop iOS applications. I saw the agenda, the methodology and I checked the quality of the teachers. The agenda was coherent and embraced everything in a reasonable period of time. The teachers were professionals of ​​the iOS development area and with a high level of expertise in the subjects they taught.

At the beginning I had my doubts as many of my colleagues, I did not want to waste money and time in a course of such a short period of time, when perhaps I could learn the same by myself. Another aspect that helped me decide was the previous process I went through to be selected. The process and the pre-work strengthened my knowledge and provided me the confidence I needed to tackle the course. In addition, during the course they did not only taught language to develop IOS applications, they also taught us how to approach an application, with a good architecture based on concepts like clean code or using design patterns.

Chapter 2: Simply... IronHack.

Ironhack changed my life, professionally speaking. I saw a way to develop fully adapted to the real world, valid for iOS and for any other software. I could say that Ironhack changed my life, not only professionally. Ironhack is a family, I realized the first day with my classmates, teachers and people around. All I got from Ironhack was positive from the beginning to the end, from the first teacher to the last, and of course, from the first to the last colleague. To me, everything was perfect.

Everyday I went to school with more desire to learn, every day I learned something new that made me come the next day with more illusion. The feeling with my classmates was amazing. We shared ideas and developed them together. With regard to the teachers, everything was positive. They were very close o us, very flexible in class schedules and were always happy to help. In fact, I keep in touch with them, as colleagues they are awesome, and I am proud to have shared this experience  with them (as well as with my colleagues).

I also have to point out all the people I could meet thanks to my classmates and teachers. I have to thank them because they made me see that you can be a crack being at the same time nice and passionate as I am of this world of mobile development.

Chapter 3: There is something after IronHack.

Ironhack provides training and a number of contacts unreacheable if you have not worked for years in this sector. Not only realted to IOS development, they offer many possibilities with seminars and lectures given by reputed proffesionals, offering a glance of the projects from the point of view of programmeing, marketing and business.

In Barcelona we were very lucky as we were able to meet many leading programmers of different companies, and people with different roles within mobile technology projects. Also I have to highlight the role of those involved in the career guidance carried out at the end of the course. Without their support and advice, seeking employment opportunities would have been much more complicated.

For all this and much more, I can state that there is life after ironhack, and I am discovering that it is a totally different life with open doors and a much wider range of possibilities. In short, being part of Ironhack was decisive to be offered the jobs I have opted to.

I 100% recommend this course, with no doubt. It's a big sacrifice but absolutely worth it, and, as I said, not only professionally but also personally.

Ironhack family thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Francisco Caro.

Should you have any question about the course on how to cope it, how to survive it, or what to do after, etc. please do not hesitate to contact me.

Email: franciscocarodiaz@gmail.com

Skype: carodiazfrancisco

Twitter: @kurrokardi

Web: http://franciscocarodiaz.github.io/

Time passes and its almost 2 years since I got accepted at IronHack, I remember the initial fear of not knowing what I was geting into and about how much what I was about to learn would impact my future career as a developer. Today I find myself in that near future and I can say that i could not be more pleased to be an Ironhacker, a part of an amazing and fast growing nextwork of developers. I would like to highlight what I found to be the most important aspect of my educational experiece: the people at Ironhack.

The Ironhack team is without doubt one of the best things of course, to get to know and see how they work and how they resolve in record time was truly enriching. To this day I still hold them as a reference. 

The level of involvement of teachers is something remarkable, precisely it was one of the teachers the one who gave me the opportunity to work with his team, Tapquo. It was an awesome team, very unusual in the world of development, they were an elite in the industry and I had the privilege of sharing work and learn with them. 

Finally we have the students.  Now we are very close friends, keep in touch and meet up whenever we can. In fact I am currently happily working with 2 of them precisely in projects we love like Gemfeed.

This is a personal opinion about my experience at IronHack Barcelona. I have to introduced myself as a customer experience and product oriented person, which means that I’m very sincere with all my experiences and also try to apply all that I've learned as an entrepreneur with a small non-tech startup company which focus on customer experience and product development. When I like something, I’ll be the best ambassador of that product or service, but when I’m not happy, I’m always very honest about my reviews. This is part of my own personal opinion of my whole bootcamp experience. Something that I wish someone would have told me before joining the bootcamp.

Before deciding to attend to IronHack, I have had several interviews for a few coding schools in the United States that were 12-weeks courses. Unfortunately, I didn’t get enough funds to attend to the one I really wanted. Then I found about IronHack in Barcelona that was a 8-week course and which the city’s living costs were also more affordable. Also all the reviews were almost 5 stars, so I decided to apply and prepare for the journey.

I did a lot of online tutorials and practices few simple coding challenges because the previous schools that I applied to demanded to have basic programming knowledge. I was very surprised that the interview process was very easy, maybe is because the main focus of the school is to take students from 0% to 80%. I had the chance that a friend that attended another bootcamp had shared with me his experience of his pre-work of the other school. So I was kind of surprised how disorganized and how poorly made the pre-course work was. We were not even ask how we were doing with it at the time.

I wrote my own very personal review, but since one of my classmates have better english writing skills and I couldn’t agree more on what the author wrote, which its content is similar the two pages I wrote, I asked for permission for posting and editing the review. I’ll just highlight a few other personal comments starting with  to slashes ( // )  at the end of each paragraph of the author's review.

We were supposed to be sent a overall bootcamp feedback survey, but even before that they were already asking us for positive feedback. My classmate's review post and my personal add-ons:

“ … Still, there has yet to be any surveys sent out, yet each week we had to complete two surveys on the quality of our instructors. This speaks volumes to the quality and goals of Ironhack. Additionally, we were told that there would be extensive career help, even a spreadsheet for us to fill out in order for Ironhack to track our progress, yet, this request for a review was sent out before even a slight mention of such a spreadsheet. There’s been no career follow up, no LinkedIn or resume reviews and I am extremely disappointed, to say the least.

// Before attending the bootcamp, IronHack sent me a PDF of more than 5 slides with "career support" that was supposed to taught during the whole duration of the bootcamp.

I'm an entrepreneur, and one of the things that completly appreciated about this bootcamp is that it was meant for entrepreneurs, as their Twitter profile says, note that not a single lecture involved any entrepreneurial concept with code.

My experience at Ironhack was amazing in regards to my peers and the quality of our TAs. Despite there being only one TA per 8 students, they went above and beyond to help us out and it was so appreciated. 

     // Thanks to the TAs for all their effort!

Aside from that, I entirely regret choosing Ironhack for my bootcamp experience as Ironhack has failed at their only two objectives: be a great educator and be a great business. My list of possible improvements is endless, but here are a few: 

    1    Start by actually vetting your instructors. Have them do a test run in front of you. Are they comfortable with public speaking? Do they engage the audience? Are they clear when speaking English? Are their materials written in proper English? Are the passionate about working with others? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you shouldn’t be hiring the instructor. If you wouldn’t want to listen to them on a Monday morning, don’t hire them. Period. 

        // There were days that I honestly think I’d learned more in CodeSchool, that the current lecture because some of the teachers didn’t seem to be prepared or didn’t have high teaching skills.

    2    Be upfront about the condition of the work space and classroom. Ironhack should be ashamed of the condition of our classroom in Barcelona. I was ashamed when posting class pictures because the room looked so horrible and rundown, and it was. Paint chipping, the room hadn’t been swept or dusted in forever, there were maybe only three quality chairs in the entire room (how are developers supposed to code for over 10 hours a day on plastic chairs?), the room was unbearably hot and we had to pretty much protest for weeks in order to get fans which then just circulated all of the dust around the room. The projector didn’t even have a screen and it was close to impossible to follow along with the instructors having to adjust their settings so frequently. The tables were not actually tables, but rather pieces of lumber stacked on wooden posts even though the average Mac in the classroom was worth $1500. If one of those Macs were to fall and break, I think we can both say that Ironhack was not going to cover the costs.  

        // The first thing I’d learn while studying at industrial engineering: work conditions (weather, ergonomics, etc) affects productivity. I truly understand and appreciate that Barcelona is such a environmentally friendly city, but take into account that 80% of our bootcamp was not form Barcelona, and I’m from Panama City, Panama (Central America), where is 30ºC all year round, and I haven’t been that suffocated by heat in a workspace in my entire life. 6 tables, 2 fans, not enough! By day 2 there where two more, and that wasn’t even enough. I literally had to bring my personal fan until the last day of the bootcamp because I couldn’t focus on class or during my final project.  Some electric extension were laying on the floor, where easily more than 10 times people have tripped because of them. Also, as programmers that were supposed to spend 10hrs+ a day in that room, I expected to at least have basics: water and coffee. Filtered water tanks or water dispensers with filters, specially when not even people from Barcelona drink their own tap water because it is awful! 

    3    Reevaluate which students are accepted into the program. While of course more students mean more money, if you don’t have enough TAs and are unwilling to provide more, then simply get more selective and accept fewer students. Also, students who have been working as a developer and beginners are not to be in the same class. Reevaluate your mission as a school and choose an audience. The majority of the time, it felt as if the instructors were speaking to 3 of the 16 students. 

        // Either you take people from 0% to 80%, or from 20% to 120%. There where students that haven’t even finished the pre-work before coming to class,  and where so lost on the basic concepts. I think it may have downgraded the class for people with more experience. 

    4    Establish your worth as a school and stick to it. Although each student paid the same amount, certain students have been afforded the opportunity to retake the bootcamp. If that is the case, are the rest of the students going to get half of their money back? I didn’t think so. I, in no way, learned as much as I thought I would have and I know I would have been given more attention had I chosen one of the American bootcamps, yet a second round at Ironhack was never offered to me. Keep it fair, it’s as a simple as that. 

        // The fact that there were several students that either dropped out or very lost in class and they just decided to skip some subjects and do what they could, should have never happened on the first place if the pre-work was better built and proper follow-up student/pre-work would have existed.

    5    While MOB is clearly not the correct choice to host Ironhack, at the bare minimum, if it is known that there is going to be loudly obnoxious construction the FINAL DAY OF PRESENTATIONS, the day for which we prepare during the entire bootcamp, the day that Ironhack invites guests to listen to its student’s present, you find an alternative space in Barcelona to host the presentations. It’s not that hard, not to mention Ironhack’s connections to startups with amazing presentation spaces. I’m sure those startups would have loved the exposure and would have loved to be a part of the presentations. Get creative, don’t get lazy. 

        // At the HackShow, there where 40-50 people in that room, and I felt ashamed that the audience had to uncomfortable watch our presentations which such heat. Also, as a finalist for the top projects, I was very sad that not a single video was taken by IronHack, like the previous cohorts, or even t-shirts with our handles where given to all the students, to have memories about our experience presenting our final project. This may not sound very important, but if you start adding features, even as almost meaningless like the previously mentioned, you shouldn’t downgrade by taking it away. *MOB: Makers Of Barcelona, where the bootcamp was being held.*

    6    Know your audience. During our “hiring help days”, the first thing that Alvaro said was that most of us probably aren’t comfortable with networking and approaching strangers. False. The majority of my class came from backgrounds like communications, media, marketing, sports, recruiting, journalism, customer service, etc. Learn about your students before you attempt to advise them. Additionally, don’t have us go into a corner and show you our LinkedIn profiles while you tear them apart -- it’s not thorough and it’s inefficient. Take the time to look at the profiles in advance, take some notes and then discuss with us. It will save both your time and the student’s.  

        // I like people being realistic, but Alvaro saying that it was almost impossible to get a job in Spain as a non european, was absolutely demotivational.  Nevertheless, one of my classmates and me, non europeans, got job offers, because we manage to find alternatives to pursue success. So, don’t just say it’s almost impossible without providing work arounds. Also, how come you claim to have a 97% rate of hired students when not even 50% of the students are showing up at interviews and  with such non-existing follow-up after that?

    7    Hire more TAs. Don’t be greedy. Money is great, but a stronger reputation is worth much more and ensures longevity. Having to sit and wait 40 minutes to ask a question is beneficial for no one, especially a newbie.      

        // I get that some students may have slow pace while learning, but the other students that are paying the same amount of money, deserve the same kind of attention and assistance during class. If you don’t want to let anyone behind, make sure that each student is really prepared to start a coding bootcamp.

    8    Lastly, hire someone that has both customer service and teaching experience to facilitate the education aspects of Ironhack. You need them. As a former educator, most of the things that went wrong were simply due to lack of planning and experience. Even our welcome meeting was lackluster and could have been full of creative and light-hearted icebreakers designed to get everyone introduced to one another.   

        // TAs had enough work as being TAs, someone that takes care of the customer experience and product is very needed so we don’t end out writing this long reviews!!!

I truly hope you view this feedback as constructive more than anything. Everyone wants to see Ironhack succeed, but without some adjustments it’s truly not worth it. "

// Couldn’t agree more with this! 

And now, one of my best friends, who I recommended to learn to code and go to IronHack, is about to take the next cohort, and I just wish he can have a better over-all experience that I'd had. I'll definitly take another bootcamp in the next few years, this time one made in the USA.

Turns out that after many years of work in a certain field I’d like to change something and focus only on doing things that keep me engaged and very enthusiastic about. Learning web development technologies was something I intended to do for a long time, but never actually took my time to just do it, I decided this is the time and I chose Ironhack based on their reputation, training curriculum and also because I really wanted to spend some time again in Barcelona :-).

I am really confident my investment will pay off, in fact I think it is one of the best investments I ever made. I met the most extraordinary group of people, my colleagues, and I learned a lot in a relatively short period of time. I never coded before, so the first week seemed like a lot to take in, but persisting in understanding as much as I could and getting support from the TAs, which are the greatest, I began to feel more at ease as I continued my learning journey.  At the end of the bootcamp my project was selected by a jury of senior developers as one of the top 5 projects in the class. I wish you all happy coding at Ironhack !

Probably the most incredible part of the experience is the surprising level of continuous support from the entire IronHack team. With a family member serious ill throughout the process, I've sometimes had to shoot off to the hospital or the like temporarily. On each occasion, the team displayed genuine concern, which meant a lot, and helped me stay on track with the course. It's a testament to the IronHack mission of making us part of their community.

As an attorney and someone whose career is mostly in management/operations, IronHack teachers made it fairly seamless to transition to what was previously a foreign language (code).

Came to Bootcamp with already lofty expectations to be completely immersed in coding for 8 weeks. At its conclusion, I feel like it has exceeded those expectations by also being an immersive experience into technology and a style of thinking.

I was a recent college graduate with a degree in Art and Art History. Learning to code is something I had always wanted to do but felt intimidated when I tried to learn on my own. When I heard Ironhack was coming to Miami, which is where I live, I knew I had to do it.

I had almost no previous experience with coding (very minimal HTML and CSS) and now I can't believe what I've been able to learn in 8 weeks. The instructors have been amazing. Some people can be geniuses at something and not be able to teach it. The Ironhack instructors and T.A.'s are not only genius coders but incredible teachers. The class size was small, only 12 students, which is actually the largest cohort that Ironhack has had in Miami.

I was worried about paying for the bootcamp but they assured me I wouldn't need to start payments until after landing a job as a web developer.

Overall I'm really happy I chose to go to Ironhack. I feel like my future is being fostered by everyone here and that this is one of the best decisions I've ever made for myself.

The program at Ironhack Miami is one that I'll remember for the rest of my life. From day one you are immersed in programming culture and basically hand-held for the first 1-2 weeks.
They start from the basics, and build your programming chops from the ground up. The team they have put together has become the best learning experience I've seen, and your peers will quickly become your friend circle.
There are some cons tho, but they are purely opinionated. You are going to have to want to learn, and you are going to have to be willing to stay late to be sure you grasp the concepts of the day. 
All in all, Ironhack is the premiere bootcamp option in Miami, with their talented staff and strong work ethics, anyone can sign up and be a reputable coder in just 8 weeks!

I was a full stack web developer and I wanted a BIG change in my career, I saw some information about Ironhack last year, but I couldn’t go, my mistake. This year I was able to attend this bootcamp and now I’m working as an iOS developer in a startup, that was the objective and thanks to Ironhack now I can say “mission accomplished”.

I’m Anand from Malaysia,I studied I.T from London Metropolitan University and the last time i code was 10 years ago. I am a Web Designer,Graphic Designer and a UI Designer. Over the past years i have ventured into many other work including producing Reality Shows and account manager for brands.

I chose Ironhack because of its reputation as the best Coding BootCamp in Europe and it was nearer for me since I came from Malaysia.

The methodology is good as far as it is concerned, i have never been to other bootcamps, so I can’t really say much about it. It would be nice if you can suggest extra one month or something for those beginners before getting into the main class, so everyone will be in the same level and understanding.

Teachers are good and was able to cope with all our questions and ramblings, also my classmates were totally amazing, they were part of the whole study as well, without them I don’t think I would have totally survived the bootcamp.

The things I like the most: free beers, good classmates, environment and the people .

The most difficult part for me was Coredata. Trying to grasp everything everyday was difficult, everyday we were learning something new and had no time for recap and remembering.

My final project was Menu Del Dia app which shows the menu del dia of the restaurants nearby to the user. Its a simple and straightforward app.

Too early to say anything about Careers...well i think so far so good, lets see how its goes.

I would recommend Ironhack to everyone because it’s a very good place to have a feel of what is coding all about and the excitement of it.

Ironhack is certainly a unique experience, in my case I am a computer science engineer. Since the first day I noticed that Ironhack has nothing to do with what I studied at university, where what they taught was really outdated. Courses were oriented to the theoretical part and quite unrelated to what companies were demanding.

The community I created with my fellow colleagues at Ironhack is magnificent and today we remain as a small family where we all help and cooperate with each other for a common benefit.

In Ironhack you can get the ability to develop projects that you have previously thought about but you weren’t able to develop because you didn’t have the tools and knowledge you need. That was what happened to me, I have an idea before arriving and was not able to carry it out. But I could make it for the  Hackshow at the end of the course and I proved myself that I could do it.

Also they have advised me magnificently on how to orient my professional profile online and prepared me to face interviews, coding challenges and to negotiate my starting salary.

Many friends ask me if I will recommend Ironhack and I have no doubt, it´s a great experience I wilI repeated again without hesitation.

Going through Ironhack has been the best educational experience I have had in my life, and I know that this only the beginning to reaching all my professional goals.  

I started to study Electronic Engineering at Carlos III University in Madrid, but soon found out it was not for me. So I ended up enrolling at a Professional training program in Telecommunications. There I found out about my passion for coding

Ironhack for me is a dream come true, bringing to my professional and personal life unmeasurable value. From the 1st day when I met the instructor Rafa de Castro I knew that the best way to learn web development. What I loved was that new concepts we learned were immediately put into practice in exercises.  

What Ironhack has given me above everything else is a group of colleagues that I met and shared over 10 hours a day learning with. We helped each other all the time, we carried out projects together and most importantly, every friday we went out for a few beers! It was tough to spend so much time programming and to learn so many new concepts in only 2 months, however having such peers and mentors and professors, really made the difference and created the perfect ecosystem to learn more every day. You could feel the passion everyone there has for coding!

Ironhack is much more than your peers and professors, in the labour market you can feel that being an Ironhacker starts to make a difference. In Madrid you run into Ironhack alumni at every coding meetup and there is one working at a bunch of companies or startups.

I am delighted to have done the course, I definitely recommend it to all my friends, my life has completely changed. As I said, one month later i was an ...iOS Developer ! And I starting coding not so long ago as my education is in economy and business administration.

The bootcamp is tough, but that's how you learn, basically no pain no gain. There are several key points of the course that make you adopt a winning mentality and very professional approach to programming.

The first point is that teachers are first class. What you learn in Ironhack is to do things in a serious and professional way, you’re the one that set the limits .

The routine takes several hours a day. Starting at 9am, teaching ends at 6pm but then we all stayed until 10pm with colleagues taking things forward, the atmosphere is really awesome! It is like all paddling together to reach the goal, these are the kind of experiences that create amazing links!

You’all also learn lots things about the environment, is like driving for the first time, lot’s of good feelings. There are several weekly business talks and workshops, thanks to them you get to know lots of interesting people, businesses and personal experiences. It gives you a good idea of how does the startup ecosystem works today.

One of the things that I was worried about was the loneliness I was about to face at the end of the course. In that sense Ironhack helps you very much. Ironhack assigned a person (Alvaro) dedicated exclusively to prepare and help everyone at my cohort to find a job. He was kind of my personal coach! I can also say that Ironhack is highly valued in the market, is what I have noticed when I finally start working one month later.

I hope my thoughts help you and you will be excited about joining the course, it is a very enriching experience!

I started to study Higher Technician in Computer Network Systems Management in 2010 and it was during this period when I discover the world of programming and I was totally hooked.  After that, I was working as full stack web developer in a marketing online agency where I had to face many challenges.  One day I realized that I need to stop and continue learning. My main goal was to  improve my skills developing scalable, maintainable and well tested web applications. That day, was the day I found Ironhack and I left my job to begin a new adventure.

From my point of view, Ironhack is the best course to start a career in web development. You will learn not only all the best practices and all the technologies required and used by the leading companies, but also you will be involved in a great and different experience where teachers and classmates work and practice together to get the best from every hour.

Teachers are all excellent professionals with a huge working experience so learn from them has been a pleasure and a great opportunity.

All eight weeks of the Bootcamp have been very intense but the hardest week for me was the second one, when I discover how to do TDD and it was very challenging.

Finally, doing a final project where you can practice everything you have learned is essential. In my case, I was working in a learning platform called “Skillstep” where you can create your own learning tracks. To introduce a project at the Demo day was not my goal, so I decided to focus in learn better how to do specific parts of my application and it was good choice. Whether you want only to learn or you have an entrepreneurial profile and you want to know how to develop your project, you will find no better place.

Career support after Ironhack is excellent also, and the “Career Week” a good opportunity to get  a good job. Thanks to a coding challenge sponsored by a company that we did last week, I am waiting to close a job offer only a couple of weeks after graduating, so I couldn't be happier at this moment.

When I first learned about Ironhack, I knew everyone is capable of coding. I tried to learn how to code by myself, but I felt lost in the huge programmer’s world. Ironhack was my guide to obtaining a full web development toolbox. The classroom based learning environment is ideal to improve your skills and to achieve your career objectives. After some weeks of intense work, a rollercoaster of feelings and many hours working with great teachers and mentors, I find myself comfortable around languages and technical resources to grow up any web business idea. Ironhack is the absolute platform to start your developer career.

I am a photographer who wanted to change the course of my career, so I started to experiment with many disciplines and ended up discovering that coding was something that I liked and I was good at. At first I was trying to learn by myself, but when I found Ironhack and the way they understood education, I didn’t hesitate and applied for it.

During the bootcamp I met a different approach to learning that was really different from what I’ve seen during all my years of being a student. The way that the syllabus of the course is developed is impressive. In Ironhack the focus is in the feedback of the students, improving the quality of the materials week by week.

Thanks to their methodology centered in doing things over heavy theory, working with your classmates and helping each other and the excellent selection of professionals programmers who also know how to teach, in the end you know more than two programming languages. You learn to learn. You make your basic principles that will lead your future career as a web developer.

Would I recommend Ironhack? Of course.

Ironhack's bootcamps are short in time and long in contents. I don't think they are for everyone. You mut be properly motivated for it. Thats why Ironhack has a selection process to be sure you are a good candidate.
They also have a scholarship program for the proper candidates.

Trying to complete these contents in 2 months means to work on it from 9am to 9pm every day during the bootcamp. In my case for example I accomplished Ironhack’s bootcamp with the following contents (more or less) in 8 weeks:

    •    Week 1
    ◦    The basics
    ◦    HTML, CSS, JS
    ◦    Responsive design
    ◦    Browser development tools

    •    Week 2: Start coding!
    ◦    Git, Github, Gist
    ◦    Intro programming and algorithms
    ◦    Coding in Ruby on Rails
    ◦    First test spec

    •    Week 3: Clean code
    ◦    Designing web apps and clean code
    ◦    Data and relationships with Rails
    ◦    Using MVC with Rails

    •    Week 4: The agile way
    ◦    Agile management
    ◦    Writing tests
    ◦    Forms and gems
    ◦    Deployment of the app

    •    Week 5: Javascript time
    ◦    Client Side Javascript
    ◦    Integrating common APIs
    ◦    Advanced frontend with SASS and HAML

    •    Week 6: Getting serious
    ◦    Monitoring, performance, real stats
    ◦    Advanced Ruby on Rails
    ◦    Applying caching
    ◦    Securing things

    •    Week 7 & 8: The end
    ◦    Advanced Workshops
    ◦    Final Project
    ◦    Demo Day

During two months you can do nothing but coding. That means you cannot work during the bootcamp.

Does it worth?
Absolutely. It’s hard, expensive and sometimes stressand, but it's also funny and the reward is amazing. 
Teachers are very skilled people they will push for a fast learning path, so you will learn in a way you could never imagine before. In quantity and in quality
Besides, you will meet a lot of interesting people with the same concerns than you, and they enjoy his profession like you do.

If you work hard you will be prepared for the next step in your career’s evolution to a better job or just to do it better where you are.
My personal experience is that thanks to Ironhack and my hard work, I reached all my goals in 3 months.

My experience at Ironhack was very positive one. As a minority and female with limited coding experience, I was doubtful at the beginning if I could complete the program. However, after 8 weeks, I not only completed the program, but also was able to develop a web application from scratch. 

Before Ironhack, I was in business, doing completely unrelated to programming. I even had a great fear for anything technology. One day I decided to cast off my fear of tech and started learning how to code. Though I was studying dilligently, it was very inefficient. As a responsible adult with responsibilities to fulfill, I thought going to school and learn "how to learn coding" in a short amount of time seemed efficient than reading posts after posts on stackoverflow.  And, I am glad to tell you that I made the right decision. 

What makes Ironhack very unique was people - my classmates, the teachers and the staff. My classmates were from all walks of life and open-minded, which made me feel ok to ask even seemingly silly questions in the class. I still hang out with some of my classmates even after the program ended.

The teachers were great, too. Though some classes and the curriculum have rooms for improvement such as installing some programs prior to the cohort begins, the lead teacher, with knowlege, passion for coding and teaching, patience and care for each one of us, made my learning experience the excelent one. 

The staff. I decided to attend Ironhack because of the staff. Everyone was always thinking about how to create an open and comfortable environment and make the learning experience fun. They provided us many opportunites like happy hour, beach BBQ, and pinada smashing (to release our stress) for us to socialize and have some break. They also set up a weekly meeting where students can provide feedback and share our thoughts. People there were "real."

Lastly, Ironhack provided great job assistance. Of course, I had to do 99% of the work following their strategic advice, but they set up interviews with companies (I received a job offer from one of them), provided useful resources and followed up with me on the phone almost weekly for practical advice and encouragement. As a result, I received a few job offers and am currently working for a growing tech company (where my colleagues know the Ironhack lead instructor).

Ironhack really changed my life. 

There are many schools out there with different emphasis but I think the value of going to a coding school is to build skills, confidence and knowledge to continuously learn new technologies. Like myself, many coding school students will probably end up learning something new or maybe unrelated to what they have learned at school. Then, my recommendation is to go to a place like Ironhack where you interact with good people in a good envionment where your learning experience will be joyful. 

Ironhack has been an unforgettable experience for me and that I would most definitely recommend it to anyone really serious about learning how to code! To take full advantage of Ironhack it is important that students come with a minimum level of coding knowledge so do take the pre-work seriously.

I have been a professional developer for the last 27 years. Now I lead a my own company that develops products mainly for clients in the hospitality sector in the Balearic Islands.

For a long time I have wanted to update my skillset and learn web-based programming languages and knew it would be really hard unless I went on a “spiritual retreat”. Ironhack has certainly exceeded my expectations. Loved the fast pace of the course, my fellow Ironhackers and how much the instructors cared!

I studied photography and audiovisual communications after that. So I worked in different media outlets such as TV channels and photography studios to end up in marketing. I spent a lot of time in front of a computer without finding a motivation until I found out about Ironhack.

Up until that moment, my contact with web programming was limited to small wordpress retouches. I had learned the little I knew though online tutorials. Truthfully, I soon noticed that I was learning fast and that I enjoyed coding a lot therefore I decided to give the bootcamp a try.

During the 8 weeks, Ironhack absorbed every bit of my time. We immersed ourselves in new technologies and methodologies. Since the beginning everyone was really keen on sharing their knowledge with the rest of the group and on helping other out. Teachers and mentors were also of a lot of help, they showed infinite patience and were always available.

2 months don’t seem like a lot of time, however I was astonished of the amount of new things I was able to learn. I found specially useful the mini-projects we got assigned each day and the extra motivation of being selected among the best projects in order to present at the Hackshow.

Ironhack definitely prepares you to jump into the professional developers job market. I am not just saying this. I finish classes on a friday and on the following monday I was already working at Quipu, a startup led by one of our instructors. Currently I am coding in Rails and experimenting with other frameworks such as EmberJS.

If you like web development and you want to make a living out of it and you don’t want to spend at least 4 years going to university and you often get stuck learning by yourself, a bootcamp if definitely the answer. I am 100% satisfied with Ironhack so I can only recommend this great experience to anyone thinking about it.