Le Wagon

During few years before coming to Le Wagon, I tried to learn how to code with different mooc. It was very difficult to know how to start, which language to use, etc.. I decided to apply to Le Wagon to receive a formal training in web development to accelerate and shape my apprenticeship.From Bordeaux, I chose to come to Paris to immerse myself in the Parisian start-up ecosystem.
I want to say thank you to the whole Le Wagon Team in Parisfor supporting us during this nine intensive weeks. I did not think it was possible to acquire that much programming skills in two months. The "product" vision provided during the bootcamp is a massive strength for being comfortable with the ecosystem.
Moreover, every week we had meetings with entrepreneurs and it was nice to hear stories of enthusiast business owners.
Thank you again for this unforgettable experience.

After graduating from a Business school, and having worked as a Product Manager, I wanted to learn the basics of code to better collaborate with developers.

I joined Le Wagon, following the advice of 2 of my friends that had done the bootcamp and loved their experience, with very high expectations. I was not disappointed. I learned a ton, I also loved to be learning and the teaching staff helped me to give the best of myself.

The pedagogical approach "don't just learn to code, but learn to build products" enabled me to make sense of all the things I was learning, which is something I really liked. I also found that Le Wagon's formula was really efficient: many exercises, numerous teachers and teaching assistants who were always very accessible and a lot of mutual aid between students: it made me improve very fast. The tools and Le Wagon's teaching platform are very efficient to consolidate the learnings, revise a lesson, retrieve a tip from an exercise. And the community is crazy: tens of alumni came back to share their experience as startup founders or startup employees. And it is not even stopping at the end of the bootcamp…

In the end, I found a job as a Product Manager in an agency that develops mobile apps (with the help of Le Wagon's career team…!) in which I feel a thousand time more successful than in my previous experiences, because I have a better understanding of the issues and of the coding constraints as well as a better product-oriented approach - Therefore, thank you Le Wagon!

Engineer with 4 years of experience in software development in the energy industry, I made the move to web development and freelancing in early 2018 as a drastic career and life change. So, after quitting my job, I started learning web technologies on my own but felt a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of information you can find about web development on the web: there is too much of it! I got lost among Stack Overflow posts, online courses and blogs, learning something new one day just to read few days later somewhere else that it's completely out of date and out of use. I started doubting my past choices and myself...

Then I met two of my good friends who work in the web industry and who told me: "Don't stress out! Do Le Wagon!" So I searched for Le Wagon on the web and discovered the 9-week full-stack program: I was really attracted by the curriculum and by the product-oriented philosophy of this bootcamp. I discussed with some of the staff members, watched a demo day online on YouTube and read a lot of reviews and comments online before applying to Le Wagon Paris bootcamp: let's get on board!

Before actually joining the program, there is some prep work to be done online. It allows you to gently discover the basic concepts which are going to be dealt with in depth during the 9 weeks. Moreover, it allows you to be sure you're able to work in front of a computer full of code lines during an entire day, which is the daily routine of a developer!

The curriculum is gradual and consistent with the bootcamp's goal which is to transform you into a full-stack web developer from scratch in 9 weeks. The bootcamp goes from 9 am to around 6 or 7 pm everyday, 5 days a week. Everyday starts with a lecture about 1 hour long presenting the concepts or features you're going to work on the same day. Then you spent the rest of the day working on assignments alongside one of your classmates who is your "buddy" for the day. Working side by side with your buddy helps you put what you want to code into words before actually coding it and debug your code when it's not doing what you want. If you're still stuck on something after asking your buddy for help, you can open up a ticket right from the bootcamp website and soon a teaching assistant will come and help you out.

In Le Wagon bootcamp, you will learn web development’s best practices and lean startup philosophy along with tech skills. You'll know how to code in Ruby on Rails, Postgresql, Javascript, HTML and CSS. You'll also know how to use Git and GitHub for versioning and collaboration, how to do a wire-frame and a mock-up using Figma, how to deploy and maintain your web app on Heroku and how to effectively search for help on the Internet. The project part of the bootcamp has a pretty clear goal: teach you how to code your minimal viable product (MVP) as a team of 3 or 4 collaborating in a sort of dev sprint or hackathon.

During one week, all teams have to build a marketplace web app, like Airbnb. As a product-oriented bootcamp, all students are invited in the middle of the bootcamp to do a basic pitch of ideas they would like to work on. Out of all the ideas presented a few are selected and ranked by order of preference by student votes. Those chosen ideas become final projects, that are assigned to groups of 4 or 3. During the last two weeks, the teams are working on their project. During all the project part, teacher assistants are available to guide and help students debug their code. The climax of the bootcamp is the final day, the demoday, where projects are presented and demonstrated during a meet-up and live on YouTube.

Alongside with everything written above, Le Wagon bootcamp has also side and optional activities like free meetups and talks with industry devs, yoga classes, and some free beers for the course-mates on friday nights! With Le Wagon bootcamp you'll also join a fast growing network and community gathered around web development, entrepreneurship, freelancing and teaching and driven by kindness and helpfulness. This community has reached almost 3,400 people on Slack as today (08/2018)!

Now let me tell you what Le Wagon bootcamp is NOT. It's not, in any way, a college or university course or program. You'll not be taught algorithm theory, network theory or any other fundamental course of computer science or electrical engineering degree. You will learn new skills every mornings and apply them every afternoons in typical use cases, as opposed to few classes per week for one course in typical college program schedule. Therefore, you will probably work more intensely than in most college courses but you will work only on one topic at a time. There is no final exam except the final project and the only rank, grade or diploma you'll have is the satisfaction you can get out of it.

To conclude, joining Le Wagon bootcamp is like hopping in a train: you know the final destination, the path is pretty clear and the train ride time too. Onboarded with you are people coming from all backgrounds and coding skill levels: some are still students, some have just quit their jobs, some are taking time off. During the train ride, you learn web development hard and soft skills from the experienced crew members, which are the teachers and teaching assistants, and the use of an impressive learning platform including efficient, motivational and entertaining challenges and tools. You meet your train buddies as everyday you have to seat and work with a new one. At the end, every passenger has his/her own experience of this common train ride but everyone arrived at destination on time. After the bootcamp, you get off the train and leave as a full-stack web developer able to build your own product, work in a tech company as a product manager or dev or work on your own as a freelancer. Finally you can contact anyone who took the train anytime reaching him/her on Slack to share valuable information including diverse events and job opportunities.

I highly recommend Le Wagon bootcamp for anyone willing to join an intense yet amazing journey to learn web development with Ruby on Rails!

在我来到沃耕编程训练营之前我在一个拉斯维加斯的私立高中念11年级。当时我在编程方面有过唯一的经验来自于学校的AP Computer Science Principles，但是在那个课上我们没有太多的涉及到如何写代码，于是我出于兴趣，开始在网上自学javascript。虽然网络上有很多丰富的学习资源，但想要开始做自己脑海中想象的项目，我可能还有很大的差距。只有专业的老师以及学习环境才能使我在较短的时间内完成目标。同时，我希望在大学能够申请计算机专业，所以极其需要在这个夏天开始有效率地学习编程。出于这些目的，我在网上找到了沃耕。就像之前了解到的一样，沃耕是一个十分注重项目实际操作的一个编程训练营，有四个星期我们大大小小共做了3个项目。我觉得这一段学习之旅是非常有意义的，在过去的九个星期里我们不仅学到了最基础的代码逻辑，还学到了如何正确利用网络资源和各类文档，最重要的是，沃耕很注重教授如何在现实生活中与不同的人一起写程序，如何合作与沟通，这也是这个训练营的独特之处。如果说我的目标是通过这九个星期来初步涉入编程这一领域，而且能够独立或者合作完成一些项目，沃耕完全达到了我的预期。总体来说，无论从课程安排，导师角度，或者硬件设备及环境，这都是一次非常高效且很有收获的体验。

If you are looking for a meaningful, high quality place to develop your technical and personal skills and change your attitude forever, then Le Wagon Barcelona is the place for you!

As a psychologist, I develop and organise training programmes for managers to improve their skills for the future. I am used to quickly recognizing potential in people. And damn, I can tell you: highly talented people come together in Le Wagon! You will not only learn how to code, but also what it takes to bring your own ideas to life. You'll work hard with people from all over the world you've never seen before, and you'll see the amazing results you can achieve as a team in no time. I am really proud of my team, we have built a very cool quizz-based learning platform in 2 weeks - without any programming experience before!

You'll also be lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and in the cosy, inspiring school with Gus and the other wonderful teachers. Only that they are less teachers than your partners who will support you to get the best out of yourself and get the maximum benefit from this program. The guys are just funny, helpful and wonderful people. Meetups are also organized on a regular basis, where you will meet interesting people - who may even make you a job offer!

The Bootcamp was intense, exhausting, fun, inspiring and grandiose. I will never forget this time and the things I have learned here - not only through coding, but also about what people are capable of when they are in the right community. Thank you, Le Wagon Barcelona! I look forward to seeing you again soon! 

Lets start by saying thank you to the whole Le Wagon Team in Barcelona. My time during the bootcamp was fantastic. I signed up to Le Wagon because coding had always been something I was interested in, but never really got around to learn. I bought a book or two, two years ago trying to teach myself the basics of python but ended up quitting only after a couple of days because it was just to theoretical and boring to learn by myself. The approach of Le Wagon is great, working on small problem sets with changing partners was great fun. Not only did I improve my coding everyday during the 9 weeks of the camp, but I also met some great people. The first 2-3 weeks were quite tough because I didn’t really see the bigger picture back then, but that certainly changed during and after week 4. All of the small coding challenges that we solved during the start, not really seeing where they would once lead us, started to make sense and build a coherent and surprising picture of what we would actually get out of the bootcamp. I was astonished by what all of us achieved when we started the last 3 weeks of the program, working on our very own projects. We not only learned the basics of coding front- and backend but also received many enriching insights into building a startup in the tech sector. I’d say that my biggest take aways from the 9 weeks in Barcelona were that one can learn anything and solve anything if they know where to look and persevere while doing so. Coding will become more and more important in the future and anyone, in almost every sector will be confronted with new technologies and maybe even code itself. I honestly think that Le Wagon gives us a great opportunity to prepare ourselves for that future teaching us the fun, creative and cool skill of coding.

I honestly believe that coding is the language of the future; I think everything worth being a part of involves code. I come from a family of entrepreneurs who are constantly trying to push the envelope in business, finding new and uncontested market spaces to expand and grow their ideas into realities. In their ventures they have discovered that no matter how great an idea, it cannot be scalable or profitable without incorporating technology in some way or form.

I myself studied a 4 year Bachelor of Business Science Finance and Economics Degree at the University of Cape Town and am currently studying towards my CFA® Charter. Business and Finance are my passions, over the course of my degree I had the pleasure of watching the Finance Industry transform into what is now referred to as the Fin Tech (Financial Technology) Industry. Graduating from university I realized that no matter how great and relevant a degree I had, it meant nothing if I could not communicate in the industry I so desperately wanted to be in. My decision to join Le Wagon was made to help me fulfill my dreams of joining and better understanding the Fin Tech Industry, I walked away from Le Wagon with so much more. People are mistaken in thinking that joining a coding bootcamp means you are expected to become a developer. I left Le Wagon with a deep understanding of the inner workings of technology and coding languages, the bootcamp taught me a completely different way of thinking and learning. I now have all the background knowledge to understand the backend of the technological sector in the Fin Tech Industry, which is certain to aid me in future negotiations. 

In addition to learning a selection of coding languages I was given the opportunity to be part of a community of exceptionally intelligent and talented individuals. I met and made good friends with people from all over the world, not only was I exposed to the world of technology but to a wealth of different cultures and personalities. I will forever look back on my time at Le Wagon as one of the best experiences of my life and I expect nothing less for those joining the Le Wagon community in the future.

That’s my story.
One year ago I woke up with a business idea. So as crazy as it is I quit my job and tried to figure out how to make it happen. I had no skills and no interest at all in IT but my business idea was a mobile application. Everyone told me to have a look at Le Wagon. I went at one of the meeting they’re doing here in Paris every Thursday and felt in love with this amazing place. Everyone is nice and makes you become as passionate as they are about coding.
I’m from the batch #134 and I learned how to code in 2 months, for real.
At the end of the program, in 3 months I built a MVP (which is a first version of my business idea) and everything started.
Le Wagon is not giving you wings, but it gives you the tools to build your own wings. So if you have a business idea like me, do not pay 30K€+ and let someone else to build this for you, do it yourself. For 4 reasons : It’s way cheaper, you’ll understand your own product, you’ll be freaking proud of yourself and you’ll bring a super valuable product into your own company. Have a look, you’ll see by yourself : www.big-family.fr
Thanks Le Wagon, you rock !

I have always been interested in technology, but with a background in design I thought that maybe it wasn't for me, however after completing the 9 week bootcamp wit Le Wagon I was proven wrong. It was an incredible, eye opening, challenging and rewarding experience. I realised that there is so much opportunity to be creative in coding and to create a working fully functioning app from scratch was amazing. The bootcamp also teaches to you to think in a different way, and pushes you beyond your comfort zone, but truly teaches you how to learn and keep learning. The teachers, the staff and the whole experience was beyond what I imagined.

I started my studies in advertising and graphic design in 2009, doing many courses outside my University to expand my skills in different areas that I consider, at the time, useful for my job and profesional development. Through the years, I start to realize that technology was becoming, really fast, a way of consuming products or services, in EVERY single area and industry. No matter what you need, there is  an app or a web to solve your problem; and if it doesn't exist: YOU HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, so DEVELOP IT!
Through my years working as a graphic designer freelance, clients were always asking for basic things that nowadays, every company needs: newsletters and a web - just to start. And my first problem was that I wasn't able to take my design into the web. I think and create the sketches from the design perspective, but I was depending on developers to actually code the design and in many occasions, I would found out, that my ideas were really difficult to develop. Not to mention, that I have to depend on their schedule and budget.
When I asume the world is spinning around tech development, I decided to enrole in Le Wagon Bootcamp in Buenos Aires. Even though I had a lot of expectations, they were by far exceeded in the most positive way! I had the opportunity to practice my english, to know a lot of people around the world and know different cultures. It was surprisingly easy to overcome the intensity of two months, of non stop learning and coding, with the excellent group of people who shared this amazing experience with me! The teachers were super patient and positive, especially in the last two weeks where we struggle the time pressure to solve development issues... They were extraordinary good leaders that trust in our skills and were always there for us!
Le Wagon community is really amazing and supportive! :)

I learned how to code in Le Wagon: after 9 weeks of hard work, I’m capable to start a web application from scratch and I never learned so much in so little time. But what really amazes me is how I was able to do it: I learned through teamwork -- not only by attending classes and completing daily challenges but doing so with help from and helping people with different skills and background. I thought I’d be developing mostly hard skills, but I added soft skills to my abilities and now I feel ready to lead and teach.

Thanks to the people I met in Amsterdam, I’m currently TAing in Le Wagon Sao Paulo and preparing to be a teacher assistant in Rio de Janeiro, thrilled by seeing other students’ projects and helping them to make beautiful products. Le Wagon gives not only the tools to be a fullstack developer, they also teach how to spread this knowledge creating a great community that executes ideas all around the world -- and I couldn’t be more proud of being a part of it. 

As young graduate from a french business school and after several experiences within financial fields, I felt a strong attraction towards the digital world and entrepreneurship. However, I realized that I would not go far without any basic knowledge in coding and digital skills.

After great 9 very (very!) intensive weeks of learning how to code with Le Wagon in Lisbon, I gained much more than what I expected! Before this experience, I had no clue about anything in the coding area...

From a practical point of view, I am amazingly surprised by the level of understanding I have reached over such a short time, not only about pure coding, but also about the overall coding environment, from UX to web hosting. Le Wagon‘s program is very well built with a gradual rise in difficulty and a strong follow-up from the teaching team, that will fit to everybody, no matter their level.

Attending this coding bootcamp was also a great opportunity for me to meet and work with very interesting and smart people coming from different areas and making the whole experience even more rewarding.

I can only recommend this training and can assure you that you will get more than what you expect :)