Le Wagon coding bootcamp, what for?
I have just finished a 9 week bootcamp at Le Wagon in Paris. You have probably heard of this web development training and if not, you might want to have a look at here.
A little disclaimer: I loved those two months. And I want to share with you part of my experience there. Only part of it, because first, it is way too long to describe it all and also because the best thing you could do is shaping your own views on the matter.
What brought me to Le Wagon?
Before joining the bootcamp, I graduated a business school in Paris.
During my first professional experience, I was always frustrated to miss the opportunity to automatize routine tasks. It really stroke me when I was managing operations for a very young start-up. As the business was growing it was becoming more and more difficult to track activity and manage the amount of data generated with a simple Excel sheet.
Moreover, two close friends attended Le Wagon a few months ago. They were overjoyed with it.
Finally, I felt like I had to sign up for the program as I wish to start my own company. I needed technical skills to be autonomous for the first months at least.
What can you accomplish after only two months of learning web development from scratch?
I was impressed by what you can achieve after 9 weeks of training. Basically, as long as you are planning on developing a web application, you can come up with any MVP within a few days. I had the chance to attend those classes with designers, accountants, actors, pharmacists, students… We all come with our vision and skills but we are given must-have resources to build a basic MVP or to become a reliable freelance developer. You learn by searching by yourself and you are assisted by operational teachers providing practical advice.
During the bootcamp, you are asked to design, implement and ship an AirBnB clone and a group project. The results are stunning, have a look. So not only do you learn the web development basics on Ruby on Rails but also you are pretty well armed to start from scratch brand new projects.
Small advice though, if you are to become a proper web developer, this is a good start but you will still have to gather more experience.
A unique human experience
Apart from teaching you how to deal with Javascript, SQL requests, front-end design or API integration (to only quote few examples), Le Wagon is a life experience in itself.
At this point of my article, it is dangerous not to fall into the cheesy description of the startuper wonderful world where you work in an theme park practicing yoga and drinking beers at 5 pm every day. So I’ll try to be constructive and realistic in my narration.
Concretely Le Wagon brings you much more than coding lessons. Have a look at the Meetup Group of Le Wagon in Paris, you will find exciting co-founders talks, 101 programming lessons, generic conferences about specific job positions in startups. To get a glimpse of Le Wagon experience, you should attend one or two of those and meet current students. During the training, you can attend more private events to meet entrepreneurs, freelance workers, developers, product managers… It gives a exclusive opportunity to see concrete accomplishment that can be done after Le Wagon.
An helpful community makes this continuous activity possible. Developers communities are generally friendly and cooperative (just have a look at Stackoverflow) but with Le Wagon’s program you share something more, a unique experience. Alumni are always happy to give a hand or to come back to Villa Gaudelet to have a fresh beer.
And now, what’s next?
I want more than ever to build my own start-up (I’ll share with you more information in the weeks ahead). To do so, I am doing a freelance development mission to strengthen some skills, explore new libraries and continue to learn how to look for answers. Le Wagon was a necessary step to accomplish that.
