Ironhack

Ironhack has been an unforgettable experience for me and that I would most definitely recommend it to anyone really serious about learning how to code! To take full advantage of Ironhack it is important that students come with a minimum level of coding knowledge so do take the pre-work seriously.

I have been a professional developer for the last 27 years. Now I lead a my own company that develops products mainly for clients in the hospitality sector in the Balearic Islands.

For a long time I have wanted to update my skillset and learn web-based programming languages and knew it would be really hard unless I went on a “spiritual retreat”. Ironhack has certainly exceeded my expectations. Loved the fast pace of the course, my fellow Ironhackers and how much the instructors cared!

I studied photography and audiovisual communications after that. So I worked in different media outlets such as TV channels and photography studios to end up in marketing. I spent a lot of time in front of a computer without finding a motivation until I found out about Ironhack.

Up until that moment, my contact with web programming was limited to small wordpress retouches. I had learned the little I knew though online tutorials. Truthfully, I soon noticed that I was learning fast and that I enjoyed coding a lot therefore I decided to give the bootcamp a try.

During the 8 weeks, Ironhack absorbed every bit of my time. We immersed ourselves in new technologies and methodologies. Since the beginning everyone was really keen on sharing their knowledge with the rest of the group and on helping other out. Teachers and mentors were also of a lot of help, they showed infinite patience and were always available.

2 months don’t seem like a lot of time, however I was astonished of the amount of new things I was able to learn. I found specially useful the mini-projects we got assigned each day and the extra motivation of being selected among the best projects in order to present at the Hackshow.

Ironhack definitely prepares you to jump into the professional developers job market. I am not just saying this. I finish classes on a friday and on the following monday I was already working at Quipu, a startup led by one of our instructors. Currently I am coding in Rails and experimenting with other frameworks such as EmberJS.

If you like web development and you want to make a living out of it and you don’t want to spend at least 4 years going to university and you often get stuck learning by yourself, a bootcamp if definitely the answer. I am 100% satisfied with Ironhack so I can only recommend this great experience to anyone thinking about it.

Currently I am a Telecommunications Engineering student at Universidad de Vigo, a degree that covers a wide variety of topics but does not go in depth into web programming, which is what I am really passionate about. For this reason, I decided to take a break from University to enroll at Ironhack. I wanted to take some time to focus on learning what I enjoy the most, and do so while having fun and surrounded by motivated peers.

The curriculum was very well organized, starting off with some basic programming concepts, building up the level of difficulty gradually and covering coding best practices and clean code. Their methodology help you structure complex problems (you end up seeing the hidden woods behind the trees) The whole learning process is led by expert programmers and instructors, practitioners that are currently working with the latest technologies. They taught us what’s most valuable from a professional's perspective.

Everything you learn is enhanced by an exceptional group of international and very motivated buddies. To me it was really important to meet such a group of motivated students with whom I shared a passion for technology and coding in particular.

As if the above mentioned was not enough, Ironhack really goes out it’s way to make sure students have the best educational experience of their lives! I would say that this commitment to their students is what makes Ironhack different. Their help goes well beyond the 8 weeks of in person education. They provide great support making sure you reach the right coding level before you start the bootcamp and then, after the Hackshow, Ironhack staff really makes sure you are ready for the job market. In my case I was able to get a bunch of job interviews through Ironhack and ended up accepting one from a great startup in HAMBURG. That’s right, I am starting an adventure in Germany!

After my experience at Ironhack there is only one question to solve, would I recommend Ironhack to others? The answer is absolutely yes! Whether you have a tech background or you don't, Ironhack is the answer if what you are looking for is to start working in the IT sector.

I studied Physics in Munich and after several internships in business, I decided to become an entrepreneur. I am currently studying applied physics in a masters degree, however, I wanted to learn some hands-on skills in programming so that is why I decided to look for a way to learn in which I could do it effectively.

 

I chose Ironhack because to me it seemed the most professional and intensive coding school in Europe, so I decided to to move to Barcelona for the two months of this years Winter-Web-Bootcamp.

 

The bootcamp is special in many ways: It offers a broad horizon in both technical and social level. It teaches state of the art methodologies in Web-Development, but also brings together people with very diverse backgrounds.

 

At Ironhack, there is a strong sense of community: We often worked together in pairs and met many interesting people at talks about development/technology or business in the evening. I would recommend the bootcamp for anyone, seeking to boost their career with an additional key-skill. The career department of Ironhack trains their students very well and offers great support in finding work-opportunities.

 

During the final 2 weeks I built an idea I had in mind. I found Ironhack’s instructors super helpful. They gave me a guideline on how to build the minimum viable product (the product that would just be enough), and helped in the planning, making it realistic. Furthermore they helped me, solving countless technical issues, ranging from the design to the database-structure.

 

The project also benefited from the inspiring and productive working atmosphere at Ironhack, where students help each other and solve challenges together.

 

In all, I think that for non-natural programmers or want-to-be´s, being able to learn coding in such a short time period is just an incredible chance and Ironhack definitely delivers!

What I got out of my experience with Ironhack was invaluable.  I learned a great deal about myself, made friends with wonderful people from all walks of life, and came out with a solid understanding of the web development landscape.

I decided to join Ironhack because I wanted to learn more about web programming and gain a new skill. My job as a consultant consisted of working, communicating, and at times leading developers so I thought getting a leg up in coding would be beneficial in my day to day activities at work.  I knew I needed to become code literate and I knew that the best way for me to really learn programming would be to attend a course, to throw myself into the deep end.

Into the deep end I went. My experience wasn’t all butterflies and rainbows. It was probably one of the toughest experiences of my life. There is a ton of content and it is constantly changing.  It is a very rigorous curriculum with an aggressive timeline designed to really challenge you.  It put my ego to the test, it made me feel dumb at times, and frustrated in others.  The first week and a half I felt like I had been knocked down, but this was done intentionally, which I appreciated after the fact.  It got me into gear and forced me to adopt a “can do” attitude.  From a personal development standpoint the program helped me learn how to better overcome difficult situations, how to ask for help, and to really understand how detrimental negative self-talk can be to ones progress. From a technical development standpoint I was amazed at how much I learned and how much I was able to accomplish.

I think what really differentiates Ironhack from other schools is their amazing team and their culture of  “ the customer is always right”.  I really loved and was really impressed by the constant feedback loop they incorporated into their system.  It felt like a very intimate experience because they cared about my concerns, my thoughts, and most importantly my progress.  They wanted to make sure I was getting everything I was expecting out of the program; an attitude that was adopted by all of the faculty and staff.  Overall the instructors were superb. They were experts in their field, good instructors, and always extremely helpful and very respectful. 

When I joined Ironhack last summer (2014) at their Barcelona Campus I was 17 years old. I joined Ironhack straight out of highschool looking to gain proficiency in modern programming languages so that I could work at a product company.

 

When I was around 15 I started to like everything related to web design and later applications for iOS devices. Soon that interest lead me to begin playing around. I also spent a lot of time learning how to make an iOS app by learning objective-c listening to postcast and reading blog posts. As my final high-school research I made a website and IOS application about my city.

 

After graduating from high-school, as I enjoyed programming so much, I wanted to study Computer Science. However I became very disappointed when I saw that students only came in contact with code on the 3rd year at university and that the subjects taught there are very introductory and about outdated technologies. That’s when I started looking for other options, I found Ironhack and enrolled before beginning university.

 

The methodology at Ironhack is very hands on. We built many little products during the bootcamp that helped me ground and implement many important coding concepts. In addition, most of the time we used Pair Programming (when two students work together on the same project, one program while the other observes and then they switch positions) I really found learning from my peers very useful and effective.

 

My cohort was a very heterogeneous, friendly, fun and very united group. The best moments were when we went out to eat and Friday afternoon when we had a more relaxed coding&beers sessions. I had and still have a very close relationship with my classmates and teachers. Ironhack is all about community!

 

Teachers were not professors, they were an equal partner guiding you and helped with everything you needed to understand. They weren’t follow the role of a normal teacher, they were like a partner. The classes were very pleasant and made you the day short.

 

After Ironhack, I started my Computer Science degree and in my spare time I continue working at my project called Goslost and I keep in touch with my final project’s mentor. I am hoping Goslost to be fully operational soon!

 

In all, Ironhack was a great experience that changed what I thought about education and that has given me an incredible and useful  skill set and a very strong network in the local startup and developer scene. I would recommend it to anyone that is serious about coding!

 

IronHack has been one of the most incredible experiences I’ve lived.

The professors were very good in their fields, always attentive and very close, although some of them never taught before. The TA (Teacher Assistant) was alumni on the first edition so he could understand our situation and helped us in every moment.

However, the best of the bootcamp were my classmates. The selection process was very good because all of them were very motivated, hard-workers, fast-learners and close people. We helped ourselves in every problem, worked hard until 6am if necessary, and improved our programming skill together.

I highly recommend IronHack if you want to learn programming with top-teachers, incredible classmates and in a short period of time, but be prepared to work hard every day, because when the say intensive, it’s really intensive.

I started IronHack with almost zero programming skills, and now I’m able to make powerful webs by myself. I never thought of learning so much in this time.

Hi, my name is Pablo, I was a student of the iOS Development Bootcamp in Madrid (Summer 2014). I’d like to answer why I decided to join this learning path and why I would recommend it.

 

First of all, I want to explain my background before Ironhack (I will also tell what I did after that, but this will be at the bottom, don’t rush). I studied Technical Computer Science Engineering, and after that I was working for 4 years in a big education company, deploying several learning paths for e-students, mainly MySQL and Oracle courses. After this 4 years, I turned my professional career to development, this time in a small startup in my hometown, developing backend for a website, frontend, database management, and an API to communicate with an iOS and Android app. And this API project was the reason I decided, not to pivot my professional career again, but go a step further. To be honest, once I finished my University studies I never thought about going “back to school” again, but when I heard about this bootcamp, and after reading some reviews and talking to some alumni, I thought it would be the perfect solution I was looking for.  

 

The main thing I found remarkable was the methodology. It is totally different than any I had ever known while I was at the University. It’s really hands on and based on practice, even the theory we learnt (we always need notions of theory) was also based on practice, sometimes several examples, sometimes teachers left us to explore, touch and discover subjects in real situations. During the eight weeks’ bootcamp, practice is quite important since day one. We learned objective-C from the real basics of C (it’s always a pleasure remembering how C works, and why you do things you usually do when programming), then we discovered Cocoa fundaments, in order to be able to develop one single application from scratch since the very first week, and every week we went further on Cocoa programming. Each subject was taught by a different professional, so having a new teacher every week was a motivational experience, as everyone has always new things to teach (I like to name it “secrets”). Relations with teachers were always very close, so this does the learning even more interesting. And one of the most important things I ever learnt: paying attention to clean code. Every teacher emphasized in clean code as much as code lessons. About the colleagues, the youngest was 19, the older near 40. One ecuatorian (he came to Spain just to do the bootcamp), one from the USA and the rest from different places in Spain. We became good friends and each time we can, we meet up again. Eventhough many of us are working in different cities,  we are all still in contact. I’d like to share one curious story that reflects very well the Ironhack spirit; the first day we started the bootcamp, Apple showed its popular Keynote, this one with a big secret no developer was expecting: they presented Swift, the new programming language for iOS. Yes, new language. So, what happened with Objective-C? Was it a waste of time? Absolutely not. Everything we learnt was useful for any kind of language that uses Cocoa. But even more… we learnt notions of Swift in the last week of the bootcamp. Yes, the very newest language. That was really Awesome!

 

On the other side, I would also write one thing I didn’t like so much. Sometimes some subjects needed more time to be learnt than planned, such as some related with Collections Views, or network access and handle of asynchronous responses. The good thing was that while we were developing our project we were are to emphasize these things, and even more: every feedback we had, were applied almost on the following day. So, very good Ironhack team :)

 

After this bootcamp I was interviewed by three different companies, two from Berlin, the other from Gibraltar, as my main purpose was leaving Spain and keep improving myself. Finally, the Gibraltar company hired me to be part of the iOS team. I’m there since then, learning every day and giving my colleagues my different points of view and experience.

 

I’d like to explain more and more what I found in Ironhack, what I liked, what didn’t. But I wanted to explain the main points I think you may find interesting. Don’t forget keep learning every single day!

I have always had interest in programming but I did a very different job for most of my life in another country on another continent; finally I decided I wanted to make a career switch and to software development, specifically iOS, and move back to Europe with my family; I am self taught and my coding skills were already decent (albeit mostly academical) when I joined Iron Hack but I had no prior iOS experience beyond doing some online tutorials and reading a couple of books. My biggest concern was wether I'd be able to absorb all the information needed to have a solid foundation in iOS development in just 8 weeks but I have to say Iron Hack exceeded my expectations. The teachers were great and the program extremely thorough and I ended up being amazed at the stuff I learnt in just 8 short (albeit extremely intense) weeks. A big multinational company interviewd me and considered me to be a semi-senior developer and I am enduring negotiations with a couple of companies to get a job. The great thing about Iron Hack is that they kept me supporting during the job hunting process and I made many contacts thanks to them. 5 stars for me, that's for sure!

Hello everyone, let me introduce myself. I'm Elena Torró, Ironhack Alumni. I studied there for two months during the past summer, in Barcelona. I'd like to share with you my experience as an 'Ironhacker' and answer possible questions you may have.

I had a traditional education mentality, having studied only at a the University, so I was expecting to find more or less the same at Ironhack. But I was wrong, it was much better. I learned so many things that I had never learned at the University. Every week was planned carefully based on previous students experiences. We started from the very basic things a web programmer should know, and the difficulty of the lessons increased weekely. We went form HTML, CSS and JS to Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Test Driven Development and, at the same time, what I enjoyed the most: team work, agile methodologies and project development. We also had the possibility to decide if we wanted to learn something more specific, and the teachers organized activities, additional lessons and offered individual help. That's how we learned to deploy applications in production, how we acquired more advanced programming skills and how we managed to solve problems by ourselves.  Furthermore, the Intense programme was really hands-on, something that I really enjoyed!

I'd lie if I tell you it was easy. The course run for around 8/9 hours per day, but then we stayed practicing exercises, it was incredibly intense! But all the students enjoyed these hours a lot. We spent time together, learning from the teachers and from other students as well. Because we were more than just classmates, we became really close, and we are still in touch: sharing our experiences and sharing the projects we are currently working in. We also meet up from time to time. I used to code alone, but after Ironhack I've learned to share and to enjoy coding with someone else.

About the teachers, it was great to meet people who are currently working in different very cool product companies. They all have huge experience in what they tough. What I liked the most was that they were available after the lessons, and also during the weekend: if you sent a message to one of them asking a question, you'd have an answer almost inmediatelly. I had the opportunity to ask them about finding a job, what are the enterprises looking and what are the different profiles in tech companies, and it was really helpful for me.

Right now I'm finishing my studies in engineering and I found a job after straight Ironhack as a frontend developer for Google Actívate online courses. Thanks to everything that I learned about how to work in teams, I fit in the team rapidly. For the future, I've been in touch with some companies in Barcelona, where I'll probably move after my graduation. Thanks to Ironhack and to its strong network, I made a lot of contacts and now I know what I'm looking for and where can I find it.

Hello, I'm Arslaan one of the students of Ironhack Barcelona edition 07-2014
I will try to explain my experience in the bootcamp focusing in 6 main points (if its too long just skip to the 'personal opinion' part):

1. Learned subjects:
At the beginning the classes were easy to follow (well HTML and CSS is not rocket science...). After the easy part we were initiated to Javascript and suddenly shit got pretty serious: we started backend programming in Ruby with Sinatra and as a non formal programmer it was mind blowing sometimes. Then, when we felt confortable with Sinatra we changed to Rails and it took us just a week to understand the whole MVC thing (Martin from XING did a good job). Once we understood Rails we got back to advanced Javascript and then again to more Rails. 

2. Methodology
Each week of the course we had a different teacher that explained the subject from 9 to 17:30 (not totally accurate because sometimes teacher stayed a little bit more to explain things that weren't totally understood). From 17:30 to 19:00 we finished exercises that teacher left for us or just keeping up to date our work. Also we had 2 assistants who were full time dedicated to us and gave extra classes on saturdays or sunday to learn something different(TDD with Jasmine, How to contribute open source...). After 19:00 we had a talk gave by someone outside ironhack about jobs, startups, bussiness models... Every monday and friday we filled some surveys about our teacher and teacher assistants (I have to admit that a couple of times I filled the survey with all the answers as an 8 just to finish it and start coding...)

3. Background
I just explain a little my background to give the reader a full picture and understand better my answers.
I am an electronical engineer student that liked programming and wanted to get to the next level with his programming skills. I played with Java and did Mathlab, Maple and Pascal in my first 2 years of university.

4. Colleagues
We had from a 17 year old high school student to a 40 years old hardware technician, we had people from Philippines to Norway. We had diversity and it was amazing, some of us, even teachers assistants, still hang out on Saturdays.

5. Teachers
They were good at what they were doing and we knew that.

6. My actual job
Well for now I'm working part time with a startup building a restful API to manage cargos on air flights for a couple of months. Also I'm being interviewed from other Startups (wish me luck).

PERSONAL OPINION:

Ironhack, the bad parts:
I think the subjects were the proper ones to study (after all its a web development bootcamp) but not the order, I would have started with ruby and once we were prepared start with TDD because doing TDD at the same time we were learning Ruby was frustrating.
In my opinion, Ironhack should push us a little bit more after the main teachers left and give us more things to do. Also on weekends, even with our teachers assistants extra talks we could have done more, after all, Ironhack killed all of our social life. We studied in a coworking space and it was very cool to know new people that were working in the Tech field but when it was loudy it was difficult to hear the teacher sometimes and it was not pleasant.

Ironhack, the good parts:
Being a university student in Barcelona made me realize how fucked up the actual education system is, don't get me wrong, I like what I'm doing as an engineering student but the Ironhack methodology is by far, more evolved than the actual system (in my opinion of course). They listened our fridays reviews and tried to change what could be changed. Also we learnt things that are used in today's companies and gave us advise about our job research. They cared about how we felt in the course (or at least the were very good at pretending that :P). It was not about the grades, it was about our knowledge and when 16 persons meet in a room to do what they love it just feels good. I never knew if I was able to work as an electronical engineer once I finish my studies but after this adventure I know for sure that I will work programming (mainly because I'm getting paid for doing that now).