Having studied Communication and Multimedia Design, I often worked on projects where we developed websites. However I would always be in charge of design, content, user tests. Basically, I touched upon everything related to working in projects except for programming. In some prior projects my lack of programming knowledge could even be considered a severe disadvantage.
On an uneventful day in november, having recently graduated, I came across a sponsored message on Facebook. The ad referenced a program that would enable participants to join a coding or design bootcamp, provided its followed up by a six month traineeship. Because the content of the ad seemed to be tailored to my exact profile I deemed it ‘super creepy’ and continued scrolling. However, a couple of days later I ran into the same ad again, decided to look up some information and enrolled in the coding bootcamp Le Wagon.
Kind of good
In January I was one of the twenty-two first students of Le Wagon Amsterdam. Weeks started to fly past and I turned out to not be terrible at programming at all. In fact I was kind of good at it. But contrary to my previous beliefs all my fellow students seemed to do well. This really surprised me, having always believed that programming was basically terror-driven frustration only to be enjoyed by people with an unhealthy fascination with brackets, semicolons and parenthesis.
Le Wagon’s motto is ‘Change your life, learn to code’, so that’s what I did. Ten hours every day I was present at our base of operations, B Amsterdam, and I would often continue reading up on relevant articles at home. My habits, hobbies and sports all but vanished. Their space taken up by ‘if’ and ‘else’. Being a man of many interests and fascinations I was a bit saddened by my inability to practice my knowledge of concept development and design, but when the final weeks arrived it turned out I could combine my expertise with my current learnings.
The project weeks. We pitched ideas and rallied together teams and rushed into the final month, building two Minimum Viable Products (MVP’s). It was a hectic, almost emotional time. Pushing my ability to learn to the absolute limit for three months straight made me realize how far I could go. We succeeded and had a very nice demo day showcasing our products.
Without stopping I continued on into the next bootcamp, having been asked to join as a Teaching Assistant. I felt honored. Apparently my skills had developed enough for me to be seen as a viable candidate to teach others what I myself had only started learning about three months ago.
Next step
Explaining programming concepts to others proved to be a very efficient and valuable learning experience, forcing me to really consider and think about how and why things work the way they do. I don’t have a frame of reference so I still don’t know if I learned more or less or just different than my peers who went on to work with senior developers at a wide range of companies. But I was also very privileged in being able to work alongside so many teachers, each having their own specific expertise.
As with programming I turned out be kind of good at explaining to others as well. I had an amazing time with the students and I was learning at a very high pace still, constantly looking to explain in a more accessible fashion. The second bootcamp in Amsterdam ended and I went on immediately to work at Le Wagon Brussels for the summer. While in Brussels I first started teaching and after Brussels ended and the next bootcamp in Amsterdam began I was teaching regularly.
At this point I was at my fourth fulltime bootcamp in a row, including my own, and I decided it was time to make a change. Feeling like I sufficiently achieved my goal of adding ‘programming’ to my project development skills, I could now boast experience with research, concept development, design, programming, testing and marketing. Everything required to independently run a project.
New chapter
Finally, Michèle de Bruyn, who was in the same class and projects as I and had also joined Le Wagon as manager, joined me in starting our own company; Unless.
We both noticed that we often came across people who had trouble finding programmers to help build their concept, many of those people even enrolled in Le Wagon themselves to be able to independently develop their idea. With Unless we decided to focus on those people, aiming to rapidly develop Minimum Viable Products with the purpose of validating and improving the concept with actual users.
When I enrolled at Le Wagon I had previously toyed with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur but had always considered it to be beyond my expertise. Afterwards I truly felt able to create things and that made the difference for me. Change your life, learn to code.
Got a cool idea? Don’t hesitate to let me know at lars@unless.io
