8 Ways the Ironhack coding bootcamp in Barcelona exceeded my expectations
Coding is hard. Learning to code in 2 months is very demanding and does seem totally impossible. Believe it or not, the Ironhack campus in Barcelona is designed at every level just to make that happen. It doesn’t get more ideal than that. Here’s how I break it down for anybody interested in enrolling in the course.
1 — The location:
Barcelona is one of the most international cities in Europe. You do breath modernity and opportunity here, especially in the Poblenou neighborhood where the campus is located. It has become a kind of tech district, so on the way to class you pass by real tech companies and it gives you a feel of where you might end up working. Feels like you’re there already.
2 — The campus:
Fantastic open space with glass walls (Kanban boards drawn on them), plants hanging from the ceiling, kitchen, showers, desks, standing desks and tons of architectonic eye candies. It’s like your mind expands in there, and you’re hooked. You don’t want to leave. In fact you don’t. You’re given the keys and trust me, you will take advantage of the 24/7 access policy. You’ll need it on project weeks!!
3 — The staff:
They’re doing a fantastic job at keeping the place so well organized YET very informal, friendly and welcoming. And that’s important because during the bootcamp you are reinventing yourself and you will be pushing your brain very hard on coursework.
So nobody will judge you if you spend hours by a standing desk coding and dancing looking more like a DJ (or a crazy person) than a developer. You’re tired? You can take a nap in plain sight. Wanna play? Let’s skate or play football, inside of course. Nobody will ask you to stop.
The staff is committed in having you become a web developer. They know kicking a ball will help your subconscious brain solve the kata.
4 — The teachers:
Andre has been one of the most inspiring and influential professional I ever met. The guy has more than 20 years of experience, and he knows how to deliver it to you. His technical knowledge is so intimate that I’m sure he natively thinks in Javascript then compiles in English for the rest of us.
But he didn’t just taught us a programming language (and to love it): he focused a lot on best practices, on the workflow and the mindset you have to adopt in order to transform your ideas in to products through coding, and having fun in the process. Then, he passed on us so many insights drawing form his own experience, filtering out for us the most valuable. Maybe not obvious at first, but Andre insights sit on the brain and release value as time passes by.
And also, it must be said: he let us appreciate how cool a fully fledged web dev can be.
5 — The teaching assistants:
Ironhack employs the best students as teaching assistants for next cohorts. They’re three, with different levels of experience depending on how many cohorts they survived. Yes, because it’s not easy to stay patient having to debug horrible code by current students still not having a clue!! What you get from them is the closeness of relating with somebody who just finished the bootcamp, as well as accurate code revisions and debugging, directly from somebody who still remembers on what silly thing you’re more likely to get stuck on. They were stuck there too just a couple of months before, they know how and where to help.
6 — The curriculum:
Javascript is on fire nowadays and Ironhack is one of the few bootcamps to base its entire curriculum on it. Backend, frontend, all JS, because this is the present and the foreseable future of web development. In fact, anything different would have felt like time wasting.
The course is divided in three modules, each module giving you the teaching first and then challenging you on a project. The course material is constantly updated, you get exercises on a git repository to work on all night if you want. You’ll get a detailed revision of your code in the morning.
In the first module you learn the basics, HTML, CSS and JS, and make a late 90s style JQuerish app with it. Then you’re introduced to Node.js in the second module, but server side: Mongo DB, Mongoose, Express. And you make a ’00 style server rendered MVC app, which almost feels like a real thing. In the third module you’re thought a Javascript framework (this time it was Angular 5), and are given two weeks to complete your own full stack project.
At some point while doing it, which happens at different stages for different people, it’s guaranteed that you will see the light. Like in the Karate Kid movie you’ll see how all they made you do click together. Your fingers begin flying on the keyboard, translating your thoughts in to code as if it was the most natural thing in the world, while you wonder what the hell is happening. That’s when a web dev has finally emerged from within you.
7 — Events and job opportunities:
Each week we had at least a couple of talks by external speakers, giving us insights from within the industry. That has been very valuable, the best one was somebody explaining us how to make a bot using Dialogflow, with git repository and all. Fantastic.
Unfortunately, you are likely to be very fatigued by all the mental work you’re doing in the bootcamp to fully engage in the talks. But it is all meterial you can go back at a later stage, having had direct exposure to it, and maybe even networked with a real tech-industry specimen.
And we came to job opportunities. I yet have to attend the hiring week which is organized at the end of the bootcamp and it’s supposed to be a kind of speed dating between us graduate and tech companies. BUT, during the last event one of the speakers gained an interest in my final project and we’re now exploring the prospect of remote work for his creative, amazing and well established start-up. So yes, nothing concrete yet but I can’t beleive the fact I’m actively asked for interviews even BEFORE I start searching for a job. Amazing.
8 — The people:
I barely been alone during these two months, the group spirit has been fantastic. From spending the night all together coding, to partying at campus on the weekends, I felt so fortunate to get to meet so many great people.
On a personal note, that was even more important given the fact that I lost my father while I was attending the bootcamp. It wasn’t an easy decision to stay and learn coding, but it was the right choice. The understanding and support I received from the staff and the other students has been fantastic, don’t know what kind of place I would have been in without it.
No magic involved
I do recommend the course, it delivers on expectations, but be ready to push yourself as hard as you can in the learning process. There’s no magic, it all comes through hard work. Ironhack will provide you with the best environment, tools, knowledge, people, it’s like a state of the art gym: the sweat is still all yours.
As for me, I might take the UX/UI bootcamp, Ironhack is kind of addictive.
