Le Wagon

During my Business Administration & Economics studies in Passau I missed the connection to the start up and technology world. I was missing a skill which was not taught in university. Being curious about the internet and online presence of companies, I have always been interested in the development of such things. A friend of mine told me about Le Wagon and there was no better starting point than after my Bachelor’s Degree. We both applied to Le Wagon in Lisbon and were happy to be both accepted for the bootcamp starting in September 2017. I didn´t really know anything about coding and what to expect from the bootcamp. My first steps in that direction took place with the prep work I needed to finish before the start of the bootcamp. I already experienced the feeling of highs and lows during the prep-work. With no background knowledge, I sometimes felt lost and then the exhilaration of being a ‘geek’ when I got what I had to do. When I arrived in Lisbon I got to meet all the other beautiful and very interesting people who decided to take on the same challenge as I did. There were people who already knew some coding and others who didn’t know a bit. The first two weeks of the bootcamp were the hardest for me. Back- end coding without seeing any output did not make sense at all for me but made me feel nerdy at the same time. After those two weeks we did a deeper dive into the different topics and languages of coding and I started to get the hang of all the concepts we learnt before, it was all making sense. The teachers and assistants were extremely helpful and available at all times during the day and even mentioned to be available outside the classes. I had highs and lows again, some days where I didn´t get a bit of what we were doing and others were I was able to help my colleagues. In the end, it was the most challenging and most interesting time I’ve had in the last few years. Everybody was able to create something beautiful and impressive after such a short time. It takes hard work and discipline to be really good, but it is the best school and system to learn how to code or to dive deeper if someone already knows how to code. No one is left behind and the teachers take time for everybody. Le Wagon was the best idea for me and my career. I have learnt a lot and now found something I really can see myself doing professionally and staying motivated with. It is a challenging bootcamp but it helps in professional growth and personal as well. All the important skills are brought to you through different experiences, tasks and events. Thank you very much to the whole team and batch #97 in Lisbon.

I was originally a social scientist without affinity for IT when due to my work as a Project Manager I started to collaborate closely with programmers and IT professionals. That’s when I made up my mind to learn to code to be able to better communicate with my team members. After some research, I decided to join the Le Wagon Bootcamp in São Paulo (Batch 64). My expectations were very high and they even got exceeded! I did not imagine that I will learn in such a short time to build a working web application from scratch. For the final two-week-project we have built a doctors review page with a group of four programming newbies. It was an amazing experience and I recommend the Le Wagon bootcamp to everyone that is motivated to learn to code.

 I always knew that I wanted to code, but I was really afraid to try as it seemed to me as something very difficult at that time, so I spent about a year doing various online courses. That’s where Le Wagon shines, it doesn’t simply teach you the syntax of the language, it gives you the mindset you need, it teaches you the way to approach a problem and solve it, because coding is not about the language syntax, it’s the easiest part in fact, breaking down the task and finding the ways to build/solve the task is what coding is, syntax comes very easy when you know what you have to do. The course is fast and I can say it was pretty INTENSIVE. PS: I could say that intensivity is their magical formula of teaching any person to start code in so little time. Nowadays I’ve started my own app “Barracalivre.com.br”, and I still have to learn a lot, but Le wagon was the best wake up call.

Before Le Wagon, I was working on the business team of a Portuguese startup where most of my colleagues were developers. Being in that environment, I naturally started to grow an interest in coding.

I tried some online courses but found it difficult to get the most out of them at home by myself. That’s when I first heard Shannon, Lisbon’s driver, in a talk about women in tech. I also had a good reference from a former Lisbon alumni.

That summer I applied and quit my job. Though I was confident that learning to code was a good move, I did question myself about leaving a safe job for a new and unknown future.
You might often read people saying that it was one of the best decisions in their lives. I can now say that that is not an overstatement. The bootcamp is really well planned for people from all different backgrounds. Yes, you will struggle, but that is the whole point. And there is always a teacher or a colleague to discuss the challenges with - that’s one of the most valuable sides of the bootcamp.

Besides coding, there is a really interesting entrepreneurial mindset and you end up practicing really important social skills.

In the end, you might still be a junior developer, but you will feel empowered enough to build you own web apps, apply to jobs or learn other languages.

9 intense and very rewarding weeks that go by so fast. My recommendation: apply to Le wagon and just enjoy the ride.

Fantastic, exciting, rough, tiring ... and in the end an experience that exceeds all expectations!
Before Le Wagon, I was Project Manager in the field of chemistry (nothing to do with IT), and at the same time, I was running a parallel startup project with two other coders. With the experience in the startup project which was complicated by my lack of computer skills, I decided to take accelerated training to understand the difficulties and challenges of software development. With Le Wagon, I not only gained an understanding ,but acquired advanced skills, a high level pedagogy and above all a dedicated team that surrounds you and advises you even after the end of the bootcamp.
After 9 weeks of classes, I was able with classmates to develop a platform with online payments from A to Z (www.tribo.space). I am still impressed to see what Le Wagon has allowed me to learn in such a short time and especially with a business orientation because the goal is to offer entrepreneurs the technological skills to create their own web products!
I recommend this school to anyone, whether entrepreneur or simply curious, as behind these doors opens another world with a fantastic Le Wagon community! THANKS GUYS!

I was looking for a new career path and have always been attracted by logical stuff like web development.

I didn’t want to go back to classes for years, I just wanted to learn quickly and with an intensive rhythm.

I have chosen Le Wagon because of their entrepreneurship spirit, and I have not been disappointed a single time. I have followed Le Wagon classes 3 months ago in Bordeaux (batch 102), it rather changed my life.

It’s been a really great experience, I met incredible people, and learned to code.

Le Wagon is not just a tech school teaching you how to code and then leaving you alone in the dark with your computer. It’s teaching you THE state of mind, making you a real independent web developer. Teachers are really good in letting you understand by yourself and helping you acquire the right state of mind, making you a real independent web developer.

You will be able to think, learn and develop all by yourself afterwards.

Moreover, Le Wagon is a network, a real developer community, which will brings you help whenever you need it in your developer life.

I have always been into sustainable development so I submitted a project idea about carbon footprint transportation compensation, and it has been chosen. So I developed the project with 2 other students for 2 weeks and could apply all what I’ve learned the past 7 weeks.

Creating a complete web app from a simple idea, following every steps of the process and finally presenting it.. wahou!

Hard to go back to the real world after 9 weeks like that. You just want to code again and again, improving yourself everytime, learning a new tech language etc.

And that’s when you realize you’ve become a web developer thanks to Le Wagon Bordeaux.

Before doing Le Wagon I was studying Mathematical Sciences at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. I did enjoy my course but I loved coding even more and so there was only one idea I had in mind. Finding a course where I could code everyday and have fun while doing it.

I studied Java for three years at school. I also experimented with Swift, Xcode and Android studio in my spare time. But there was nothing out there that could make me learn fast enough, studying by myself. I thought that a bootcamp would help me get where I wanted to be and Le Wagon seemed like the perfect fit for me as I wanted to build and launch my own app.

The course is really tough to begin with as you are learning a whole new language, but there are tons of teachers in the room always there to help and make you learn as quickly and as much as possible. I really cannot stress enough how helpful and supportive all the teachers are. Also the big difference that I found help me learn faster through the bootcamp as oppose to self-studying is that the bootcamp was so well structured. This allowed me to get all the basic building blocks right and in place so that I could build my very own web app by the end of the course.

I ended up building my idea called Resort Runner, a SaaS platform for large hotels and beach resorts. I got the invaluable experience working in a team over three weeks and we built two amazing Apps in the last 3 weeks.

I have continued building resort runner and hope to launch the application in the coming months. Le Wagon was an incredible experience.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at Le Wagon London, I found it an extremely rich and structured course, supported by a great team of teachers.
What I appreciated the most and still appreciate now that the course is finished, is having every lectures recorded and the materials supporting it available online. It’s particularly handy for reviewing forgotten or difficult parts.
The community of fellow alumni and teachers on Slack is also a great place to find help to solve problems, hear about job opportunities and keep up with new technologies. 
I also appreciate having done all this projects during the course as I now can keep working on them on my own, adding features and keeping my GitHub contributions up!
I strongly recommend Le Wagon!

After graduating from an engineering school, I started to work for a big corporate as a project engineer but I quickly realized I was really bored, that’s why I started to look for a way to radically change my career path. I’ve always been interested in digital companies especially startups, and I was curious about programming. I wanted to fulfill my curiosity and to launch myself into something new, that’s why, in july 2017, I joined the 83th batch of Le Wagon Paris. It was one the best decisions I took : the courses, the teachers, the ecosystem, the alumni… were amazing. 
The program lasts for 9 weeks, the learning objective of the first 3 weeks is to master the basics of the Ruby programming language, then we learned database concepts, SQL language and frontend languages (HTML/CSS/javascript ES6). After that, we worked a lot with the framework rails that’s why we spent time to learn and practice the MVC pattern. During the last 3 weeks, we formed teams with 3 to 4 persons to work on 2 projects : a clone of Airbnb (1-week project) and our own team project (2-week project) . To help us define it, one day is dedicated to prototyping. I really loved the fact that we worked and learned  in pairs during most of the day to promote assistance and to allow us to know each other before the 3 project weeks.
I feel really grateful because Le Wagon made me want to keep programming that’s why I started a new job as a junior ruby developer in a startup.
Feel free to contact me on Linkedin, i’d be glad to give you more details about this experience.

The beginning of 2017 marked a big change in my professional life. Community management, SEO, ads wasn’t the thing I was looking for anymore and I needed something more creative and meaningful. A job where I could find more excitement every day.

Coding seemed to be the best way as I always found this incredibly interesting. During months I learnt alone with online tutorials, side projects and a big part of exploration. But it wasn’t enough because I was lacking something more concrete and structured.

So I took another step, I register for Lewagon #102 in October 2018 in Bordeaux. Along with 11 other students, I learnt web development in the best possible way. From Ruby to front-end languages and databases, the whole adventure is nicely supervised by our teachers.

During 2 project weeks, we built a product with two teammates that allowed us to not only learn web development but also design, product management and teamwork. Without mentioning that this is one more project in our portfolio!

Lewagon brought me additional coding skills I needed to be able to apply for technical jobs as well as the access to a big developers community. According to me, investing in Lewagon bootcamp is completely worth it if you need to learn or upgrade your technical expertise.

Hello i’m Michael and i’d like to share with you my experience with the 9 weeks training course at LeWagon Bordeaux in April and May 2017. (batch #67)

Before, I used to be the CEO of a startup for 4 years with a web platform in education. During these 4 years , I have been struggling to find a good CTO for my startup. I could not find partners so i had 2-3 employees or i had to deal with web agencies and freelance developers. It cost me so much money. After this experience i thought it would be better for me to enhance my skills in development to be able to manage technical development in a better way. I needed a short time intensive training. I was in Bordeaux and i googled that and found Le Wagon Bordeaux training. I chose Le Wagon because i wanted to develop complex website, true apps ! And 2 amazing months started !

While i was managing developers during 4 years, there was so many languages, technologies, systems (front, back, database, servers…) that i thought it would take me several years to be an average app developer.
I wish i would have done Le Wagon training 4 years earlier, i would have saved more than a hundred thousand of euros in development, and so much time !
The training at LeWagon is intense but pedagogy is fun : you do not spend 7 hours a day in a seat watching and listening to a teacher showing you how to code. Hopefully not !!! 
Each day, the morning start with 1 hour of lesson, then at LeWagon they have their own learning managing platform where you can access a video of the lesson if you missed something or you need to check the course at home or later (available all your life) and you access to all progressive challenges of each day. And that’s how you day is so nice and goes so fast : it’s all about personal challenges, games, and the system have automatic feedback. You work with another student different each day. It’s your buddy :) And if you’re lost, or need help, a teacher is available to help you so you will not be stuck. At the end of the day a collective session of 1h30 will show an answer to a challenge or to a technical exercise.
You will also test what you know with flashcard quizzes everyday. So it’s an intense immersive process, fun, collaborative and active.
I love it ! Moreover, the team is nice, so you make good friends also and sometimes barbecue, wakeboard or party with your new mates or teachers.

After 7 weeks you are able to code a small app like a simple air bnb app, front and back with database ! That’s amazing ! The last 2 weeks you code your own minimal viable product app in team and you make it available for all the world on a server !

So many skills in such a short time : that’s LeWagon. Because i had managed developers before and because i faced organizational, product conception or technical problems before, i really noticed and appreciated that our lead teacher (so fun and skilled !) gave us the best convenient practices even when designing a simple but smart UX interface. So you’re even given good practices if you want to build a startup.

What i can do now ? Code my own app alone from scratch in a short time, put it on a cloud server, and i can also improve my skills alone because i have the right basis. I decided to be a freelance after that. So the training gave me more than just learning to code i can now code my own projects or find a job.

For me Le Wagon training is a great experience, a great learning. If you’re motivated and you want to be able to develop by yourself or get a job, if you like challenges, it will bring you to a next level and you’ll get rewarded !

Michael