Launch School

Launch School is one of those things in life that you give a shot and it ends up being a cornerstone to your life journey. It is absolutely worth every penny, second, and drop of sweat you give it. It is not a "bootcamp" in that you can hope to achieve a career transition or new skillset in 3 months and be going about your new business, or passively spend a few minutes a day and hope to divine a whole profession's worth of insight. The curriculum is long and dense, but perfectly curated to optimize the time you'll spend on it. No frivolous "micro-learning" or shortcuts. I guarantee you that if you're serious about learning this and you're willing to put the effort in, you will absolutely get what you want out of it. I'm seriously so much better off for the career transition I made and could not have done it without Launch School.

A special shoutout, too, to their Capstone program. Their Core program feels like a mountain to climb and took me a good year and a half to complete it, but after looking ahead to the job market, I realized how much left there was to learn. They do a fantastic job building on the fundamentals that you've mastered and wrap around it the necessary knowledge of how to plug into a SWE position. Most importantly, too, they offer plenty of job-hunting assistance. Anyone who's spent a while looking for jobs knows how draining it is and having the resources and community backing you up is paramount to keeping a level head and putting your best foot forward on the next interview. The Capstone program is pricey but genuinely the most worthwhile expense I've ever had.

If you're still not sure of whether Launch School is for you, dig into the preparatory reading (completely free, at least it was when I went through LS). If it's meant to be, you'll be super jazzed to give it your all after the first few reading assignments. Either way, best of luck whoever's reading this!

Starting Launch School can feel like a leap of faith, as it's formatted very differently from classic education. However, mastering the fundamentals of software engineering proved to be WELL worth it, giving me the tools needed to break down and understand any new engineering technology or concept. This led to my team and I developing a seriously impressive Capstone project (that had multiple people ask why we weren't turning our open-source framework into a business!) and provided many opportunities to impress during job interviews.

Additionally, I really appreciate Launch School's inclusivity for aspiring women software engineers, given the stark gender disparity that persists in the industry. Within the prep curriculum, women's substantial contributions to the field were highlighted. While completing Core, the Women's Group gave space to disclose our unique perspectives, support one another, and share invaluable resources. During Capstone, both of my mentors happened to be women, which, when speaking with friends in the industry, is unfortunately rare. As someone who may have gone into computer science at a younger age if there were better representation of women in STEM, I am grateful that Launch School "walks the walk" when it comes to its female students. 

I would recommend Launch School to anyone looking to become a software engineer. While it took serious perseverance and hard work, the results are well worth it. I am now making 45k more than I did as a physical therapist, with substantially more career growth opportunities, all while doing something I really love! 

I'm fairly risk adverse when it comes to financial decisions; I was initially hesitant to transition into software engineering. Would I be able to find a job? Would the benefits of starting a software engineering career outweigh the opportunity cost of leaving my previous engineering role? With Launch School's mastery based learning & transparency around Capstone graduates' excellent results, I felt very comfortable joining Launch School & pursuing a software engineering career.



Trusting Launch School's process & curriculum throughout Core and Capstone was essential for me to land a six-figure, career-launching job after a little over a month of job hunting. All of the fundamental skills mastered in Core and the teamwork exercised in Capstone were vital - they built up confidence in my skills, helping me believe that I am truly a software engineer.



I 100% would not have made the transition to software engineering without Launch School. For anyone looking to transition into a software engineering career, I highly recommend Launch School due to its mastery based learning, exceptional support system, and proven track record of success.

I found Launch School from a random Reddit thread and I'm so glad I did. I was considering whether to join a traditional 3-9 month bootcamp, go back to college, or self-teach. Launch School stood out to me for a few reasons:

- Rigorous curriculum & assessments: As a 30ish year old career transitioner with an existing college degree, I wanted to get serious about learning, have external accountability, and a clear path forward. Launch School gave me all of these.
- Cost & Flexibility: I wasn't ready to commit $15k to 25k+ for a bootcamp or the cost of another college degree. I dabbled in learning programming before starting Launch School prep but was still evaluating whether this was the right career move for me. Being able to pay $200 per month and pause anytime without penalty was a huge benefit. I never paused my Launch School subscription and I ended up paying roughly $4,000 for 21 months of Core which was the best money I have ever spent on education.
- Learn at your own pace: I talked to a few people who had gone through full time 3-month bootcamps. The long hours and aggressive schedule (where you miss a few days and you are out, with no refund) was not an option for me. I loved being able to set my own schedule with Launch School. It ensured that I had ample time to learn deeply and spend extra time when I needed it.
- Low hype: I was looking for a program with history of results and realistic expectations for success without the VC funded over-hype. Launch School's website, online reputation, and results spoke volumes about the quality and gave me clear expectations going in. Those expectations were met and exceeded.

What I didn't realize when joining was how robust and welcoming the student and alumni community would be. I got to meet and study with interesting and smart people from all over the world who gently pushed me to be a better student. I made lifelong friends who I have visited and worked with since graduating. The community of studious learners is a huge advantage.

The Core program was thorough and challenging. I knew where to get support when I needed it. I spent a lot of time studying on my own, one-on-one with fellow students, and in small study groups. Assessments were stressful because I wanted to do well for myself and they were extremely useful as a tangible measure of progress and feedback on my learning. The Core program was laid out linearly so I always knew what to work on next. This was extremely helpful after after my prior experience jumping from tutorial to tutorial without learning or applying much knowledge. When I finished Core I felt like I'd mastered programming fundamentals and could take on harder challenges. I also gained a confidence in my ability to learn new things deeply which continues to support my curiousity today.

The Capstone program was a shift in learning style, equally rigorous and rewarding. I learned so much in a short period of time and got to build actual software with a group of teammates. We learned, discussed topics and practiced techniques that helped my land my initial job and that I anticipate using for years to come. The job support after Capstone was thoughtful and incredibly helpful. Getting a software job is its own skill and Capstone helped me learn, apply, and iterate my own job search framework which I can carry forward to the future. I landed my first software job offer within a month of graduating and accepted an offer 3 months after graduating despite a tough job market.

During the job, I realized how much my experience in Core and Capstone had prepared me. I was able to become productive within a week, submit code and shape features within the first month at a fast paced startup. Within a few months I was reviewing code of more junior engineers and leading small development projects. I worked with many new technologies and tools I did not learn at Launch School and was able to pick them up quickly thanks to my experience in Core and Capstone.

Launch School's teaching style works great for self-motivated students who are ready to take their learning and career into their own hands. I got rigorous curriculum, a clear path forward, great feedback, and a solid community for $200 a month (Core). It was the best educational experience I've had so far and I'm grateful for it. If I were starting over in my software journey, I'd do it all again the same way at Launch School.

The challenges I observed as a Launch School student (None of these detracted from my experience, but I think they are helpful to know for students who may be in a different situation than me):
- The student and alumni community is large, friendly, and accessible. Launch School staff and teaching assistants are also friendly, supportive, and readily available. However, you must be proactive in engaging with the community and asking for help when you need it. Less outgoing, introverted students may need to get out of their comfort zone to engage with the community which is entirely online.
- Launch School is not a shortcut to a guaranteed high paying job. It takes serious study and time to learn software engineering fundamentals deeply. That's what I was looking for and the time I spent was worth it. I was lucky to have financial support during the time so I could focus on studying and I know many people who worked and studied part time, which they couldn't have done with other programs.
- Learning on my own (setting my own schedule, study habits, staying focused, etc) was challenging but extremely rewarding. I had periods where I lost focus and studied less but I kept on the path and grew my study skills over time. I came out of Core in the best "study" shape of my life.

My recommendations for students considering Launch School:
- Read all you can online about the program from the official website, subreddit, YouTube, Launch School blog + podcast, etc. There is so much information there that will help you decide if it is the right program for your needs and situation. Launch School has done a great job of laying out the key factors to consider when evaluating them vs other learning paths (many of which are applicable regardless of the path you choose). Many common questions have been answered by Launch School staff and others in blog posts and comments.
- Try the prep course. It is free and well worth your time even if you decide Launch School isn't the right fit for you. You will also get access to the community and can ask questions there from a host of helpful folks and staff.

 Launch School drilled the fundamentals of software engineering into me. I work on a software development team and can now converse well with software engineers about technical topics I used to struggle with before signing up to Launch School. 


Learning the fundamentals so thoroughly has also left me much more confident about, and able to, quickly pick up back-end and front-end frameworks, as well as understanding how fully-fledged web applications work internally. 

The biggest takeaway for me was learning how to learn. I am now confident that I'll be able to learn whatever I want to in the future. The assessment feedback I received was detailed and thorough, and gave me lots of information that I used to improve my learning and technical skills.


All in all, I know I can work through a number of interesting yet difficult technical books and not feel the need to give up. That knowledge and confidence is priceless - and what mastery-based learning leaves you with. I have the Core Curriculum to thank for that (particularly the assessments I failed!).


Launch School has certainly changed the course of my career in tech and has left me empowered. I can take that all the way to retirement (and beyond!) 

It's been a few years since I graduated from this program, and I've only got good things to say.

A few years in the industry, and my subsequent job experience has given me context on the way the program is taught. As others have mentioned, the core curriculum is a self-paced part of the program, and this has been designed to ensure success for everyone willing to put in the hard-work -- not just the geniuses! New topics are not introduced until you have mastery of pre-requisites (it's literally not made accessible, and I think that's a genius pedagogical move). Even within courses, the material is broken down into absorbable, well-written text. There's a lot of early emphasis on learning how to learn, and developing a habit of asking good questions.

There is TA support, and lots of avenues for asking clarifying doubts. The assessments for each course are fairly demanding, but once you're done with them, you walk away with confidence that you've really learned the topic.

Once you've finished the Core Curriculum, if you choose to do Capstone, that flips the script into going to synchronous, discussion-heavy coverage of topics like DS/Algos, System Design and modern full-stack app development. Having a peer group of hard-working, technically sound people facilitates high quality conversations, and their guidance on Capstone projects is remarkably well-geared to what's in demand in the job market.

As a neurodivergent person, the structure and organisation of the program set me up for success in a way that I hadn't yet found, despite attending well-regarded conventional institutions. If you're willing to work hard, this is the best way to learn to code, and then become a professional software engineer.

When I completed the Launch School and Capstone program in 2023, I faced a challenging job market in the tech industry. Despite this, I can confidently say that this experience was instrumental in my successful transition into the field. The program's bottom-up approach, emphasizing core programming concepts, was not only crucial for excelling in interviews but also invaluable in my daily role as a software engineer. This strong foundation enabled me to quickly understand and excel in complex, integrated concepts at work, marking a significant departure from my previous career.

The Capstone program played a vital role in bridging the gap between academic knowledge and practical skills. Having been employed as a software engineer for the past year, I realize the program was akin to an introduction to the realities of a software engineering job. Engaging in tangible projects and producing concrete results, I not only developed technical expertise but also gained confidence. This experience significantly enhanced my resume, making me a more attractive candidate to future employers.

A distinctive aspect of my educational journey was the project work I undertook with my team, which provided real-world team experience and taught me valuable lessons I continue to apply. The Capstone program stands out from other bootcamps because it allowed me to discuss challenges I faced while working with an engineering team. The team experience at Capstone effectively simulates the environment of a startup, developing and delivering a unique product.

Transitioning to a significant role in the tech industry, I can vouch for the life-changing impact of the Launch School and Capstone program. This wasn't just a job shift, but a substantial career leap, facilitated by a meticulously crafted curriculum and a supportive network. In my current role and in any future positions, I would confidently recommend Capstone graduates for any role in my company, knowing well the comprehensive preparation and skills they bring. Launch School and Capstone didn't just teach me how to code; they paved the way for a transformative career journey.

I am extremely grateful I stumbled across Launch School's website while I was ten pages deep into a random Reddit thread reviewing coding programs.
Launch School has changed my life, and I don't want anyone else to miss the opportunity.
TLDR;1 . Launch School is not easy, but you have a great community of staff and students who want you to succeed.2. Launch School, for me, was a lifestyle. I dedicated ~20+ hrs a week to my studies.   3. Launch School is an investment. You will be paying ~$200/month
Despite all of this, it was 100% worth it. I increased my salary 6x going through the Capstone program. I have savings. I have disposable income. I found my thing.
If you are a motivated, self disciplined person, you can land a role in tech.The Core Curriculum is a great place to start, and many folks can get jobs upon completing this stage. 
I would encourage people to seriously consider the Capstone program as well. You will get an amazing "on-the-job" simulaiton that will prepare you for those coveted mid/senior level roles.

The combination of the Core curriculum and Capstone is a very thoughtfully designed system, and one of the most fun and rewarding journeys I’ve been on as a student. The focus on fundamentals in Core provides an effective set of tools to define and solve problems, while also helping you gain a high degree of familiarity with programming languages and their unique characteristics. There is plenty of practice, a great community and TA sessions to help you overcome any difficulties, and the self-paced nature offers a lot of flexibility and freedom so that you can genuinely enjoy the process of learning. The rigorous approach offers a deeper look at what you are learning and why - for example, learning the fundamentals of a language before using complex tooling and libraries, or properly understanding databases before jumping into using an ORM.
To supplement this, Capstone offers a thorough transition into exploring and dealing with industry-standard software engineering problems. Working together with a team for months on a challenging issue exposes you to many different aspects of software engineering work such as debugging, estimations, and picking up relevant knowledge very quickly. It also gives you the opportunity to understand and deal with uncertainty, vaguely defined problems, and teamwork issues - these are important skills that will set you apart from many other engineers. The exploratory process of the program allows you to come in contact with a wide variety of tools, architectures, and patterns that are commonly used in both small and large software companies and teams. Due to its constant updates and real world feedback, you can trust that you are learning about highly relevant concepts.
It is rare to find a place where you can team up with people who possess a shared sense of commitment, timelines, and expectations, along with a competency in software engineering that can enable you to tackle and solve meaningful problems. 6 months into my job as a software engineer on a platform team, I’m able to grasp and contribute to architecture discussions, systems design decisions, and implementation details. Additionally, Launch School’s focus on the clarity and precision of language pays dividends when communicating with teams and engineers across an organization, or writing effective documentation. 
Most importantly, Launch School has introduced me to great engineers who are also great people, and helped me gain the skills and temperament to be a capable and reliable software engineer. After you land a job, you also get to join a very experienced and engaged alumni network! Launch School is the best option available for anyone looking to transition into the field, and your trust will be rewarded not just with tangible results, but a great community and a memorable experience.

As someone making a mid-life career transition, Launch School gave me the tools to do what I thought would have been impossible a few years ago: land a mid-level software engineering role with a six-figure salary, while having no prior experience in a tech-related field or even a related degree. For me the stakes were pretty high coming into this career transition: I have two kids and was coming from a career where the pay was already high, so I really needed to be able to skip the entry-level junior roles to make the transition to software engineering worthwhile. And that's exactly what Capstone and the entire Launch School experience prepared me for.

What I love about Launch School is that the approach doesn't focus just on getting a job but rather on launching a rewarding, long-term career in software engineering. And that to me is probably the most significant difference between Launch School and a traditional bootcamp where the bar is simply to get the proverbial foot in the door: as a Capstone graduate you are truly positioned to compete for mid- to senior-level roles if you put in the work and that's what you want.

But make no mistake: it's a long, difficult (yet highly rewarding) journey to get through Capstone and the Core Curriculum that comes before it. It took me 3 years (including a 7-month break) from first enrolling into Core to securing a job after completing Capstone. Could I have gotten a job 1-2 years earlier had I gone to a traditional bootcamp instead? Possibly. Would it have been worth it? Absolutely not. Capstone put me in a position to start my career 3-5 years ahead of where I would have landed had I attended a traditional bootcamp, with a salary $50K+ higher. So while the path to a career in software engineering took longer through Launch School, my starting point is higher with way more upside potential— and not just because of the higher salary, but because of the knowledge, skills and experience acquired along the way that enabled me to land that job in the first place.

So all in all, I am incredibly grateful to Launch School: for the high quality curriculum, for the low-risk cost structure, for every staff member invested in my success along the way, and for putting me on a path to a life-changing career. For anyone who is serious about making the transition to a career in software engineering and has the time and resources to do it, I would recommend Launch School without hesitation.

I ran across Launch School after about a year of trying to teach myself coding with low-cost
online resources. I was working full-time, and my efforts up to that point had not been too
successful. But the moment I started reading Launch School materials was the moment my
studies started building towards something bigger. “This process will take longer than you
want it to, but if you take your time and do things the right way, it will be worth it.” It was a
message I didn’t really want to hear after I had already put a year into the effort, but a
message I knew that I needed to hear anyway. No other course I had tried was stating this
truth so clearly and honestly. I knew up front that the first two or three months of Launch
School would cover material that I already knew well, and I would feel a bit frustrated at
first about “starting over”. Nevertheless, I jumped in right away, with the realistic
expectation that it might take another two years or more before I could accept a job offer.

Friends and family were incredulous when I shared my excitement about this program, but
there was no reason for me not to be hopeful. The pedagogy–starting from the ground up,
building mastery of fundamentals, verifying the knowledge of students before allowing
them to continue, and slowly building confidence through that verification–made all the
sense in the world to me. And Launch School had the results to back up their claims, not only
with numbers, but with real people. Engineers with credentials, people who had been
through the process and were now working for amazing companies, were hanging around
in the chat channels, answering questions and talking about their work. I trusted the
process from the beginning because I was convinced that everything about Launch School 
was genuine.

To make a long story short, the process worked. The Core Curriculum taught me the
fundamental concepts I needed, and at my own part-time pace. Capstone extended and
integrated that knowledge by cultivating it in a dedicated, full-time, team-based
environment. Working every day with other students, and with program graduates as
mentors, I was able to learn interviewing skills and contribute to the development of an
amazing product. I began to feel proficient. Capstone prepared me so well for the hiring
process that, once I finally started interviewing, I was full of confidence, and there were no
surprises. I knew I belonged in those hiring pools because Capstone had given me the
preparation I needed.

After finishing Capstone, I secured a job as a Senior Software Engineer within six weeks,
with essentially the Capstone average salary–a higher salary that I had originally hoped for.
Now it’s been a year since I graduated. I’m at a company where I love to work, and I’m able
to jump into any task or project that interests me and find my way thanks to my strong 
background in the fundamentals. I work at a company that supports continuing education,
gives me a voice in what projects I work on, and has a clear path to promotion and career
development. My family is able to buy a new house. And honestly, this is all thanks to Launch
School. I was nowhere close to making this kind of progress after a year of self-study. But
after less than two years in Launch School, I had everything that I needed to get a great job 
as an engineer and build a lifelong career. The same has been true for many others, and I 
would recommend Launch School, the Core Curriculum and Capstone, as an excellent 
choice for anyone who is interested in starting a career in software engineering.

TL:DR; Launch School takes a lot of time and effort but absolutely prepares you to be a software engineer for a living, both in terms of programming knowledge and mindset. 

I spent a little over 11 months doing the LS Core Curriculum. Probably could have taken less time- part of this whole learning experience for me was learning how to budget my time and focus effectively without any supervision. If you have no trouble with that it may take less time for you. Prior to LS, I had worked at an academic research lab where I coded in Matlab- most of my knowledge was gained through basically flailing at stuff until it worked, which is to say I had some practical experience but didn't have a ton of knowledge of what I was actually doing. LS gives you all the info you need, but in a way that's agnostic to language- you learn about the concept itself, and the concept is illustrated through code. This makes it way easier down the line to apply these concepts to different languages, and I have personal experience with this- I did the Javascript path but my first contract work I got while doing the program was TypeScript, and my job now is the ASP.NET framework, so primarily C#. I haven't written a single line of vanilla JS professionally, and that hasn't been an issue. 

A big point of emphasis at LS is mentality and committing to the process- you will need to take this to heart if you want to do this program. It takes a long time to complete and it's pretty much entirely self-driven. The flipside of that is now that I have a software engineering job where I get paid twice as much as my previous work and I actually enjoy what I do (and I have a boss giving me assignments), I have no shortage of motivation to get up and go to work. One thing they emphasize is that you will spend your entire career learning, learning, learning- that definitely seems to be the consensus among professional software engineers that I've worked with thus far, and keeping the mentality of a forever learner has helped me a lot with picking up new info and staying humble. Software engineering is a field that is constantly evolving with new languages, new features, etc- get used to being humble (learner's mentality) and taking time to learn new stuff. You will never know everything. "The only thing I know is that I know nothing at all." (When you get a job after finishing the program, this is not the quote to give your boss if you cause a production outage.)

Additionally, the LS community is awesome- generally, everyone is humble and looking to get better. It's very easy to get help/get a study partner/practice interview questions/find someone to do a project with/whatever else. Instructors answer questions helpfully and quickly, and give useful feedback on assignments you complete throughout the course. You're not going to be spoonfed, but I would not hesitate to say I really enjoyed learning from LS instructors when I asked them questions. 

I would definitely recommend this program to anyone looking to become a software engineer and willing to put in the time and effort. (Also, as of the writing of this review, it's $200/month- I spent $2400 to completely pivot careers. Compared to what I was making at my old job, I'll make that back in 2~ pay periods. Not bad)

I have been working as a Full Stack Developer for a couple of months now, and so far feel that Launch School more than prepared me for the realities of working in the industry. I spent about 2 years working through the Core curriculum after discovering excellent reviews and realizing I needed to make a longer term commitment in order to guarantee success. I was transitioning from 7 years working in hospitality in fairly menial and low-paying jobs. This was after a period of mental ill health in my late-teens & early twenties which meant I had to leave university without a degree. I was actually travelling, manually setting up a travel blog, when I realized that I enjoyed the coding aspect and started to look for a learning course.
After trying the free introductory material and enjoying the no-frills but comprehensive approach, I was inspired to continue - although slightly apprehensive  at the thought of  building a new career in my 30s. I spent the next 3.5 years travelling around New Zealand, working sometimes in my camper van, sometimes in libraries, co-working spaces or rented accommodation. I had to stop several times to save more money for studies, mostly working in cafes. I studied mostly part time but did manage period of full time study, crucially for the first month or two when I was able to establish good habits that stuck with me.
After a year of study I started to realize I was becoming very competent and didn't really have any doubt (just a bit of impatience) that I would be able to find work. Following the example of some other students who had got jobs after Core without doing Capstone (something I could not easily due to time-zone/location), I decided to focus on making one standout project to display my skills. This involved learning many new libraries and a couple of new frameworks but the process was relatively straight-forward with my new powers of just-in-time learning.
A few months before my temporary visa in New Zealand expired, I landed a job at a small software engineering firm. The firm pays above average for my experience level and location here in NZ. They are now helping me get a longer term visa. The combination of these things will be very life-changing and it truly does feel just in time! I have already noticed that my skills are enough to execute my position competently and I am also able to help out/answer questions from more experienced developers. For a slower but more guaranteed route to success in software I don't hesitate to recommend Launch School to others"

 Before Launch School, I got part-way through The Odin Project and Free Code Camp, and was frustrated that things just weren't clicking for me. I now realize that I wasn't learning in the best way, and part of what makes Launch School's curriculum so great is that they have an emphasis on improving your learning process. In addition, they teach the fundamentals from the ground up so you don't feel lost. Each part of the curriculum builds things up slowly so you have a full understanding of how things work and how to fix bugs in your code.        Another thing that Launch School does that is missing in other classes is teaching you how to figure things out for yourself. Anyone can follow a tutorial, but employers are looking for people who can look at a problem and figure out what they need to learn in order to solve it. Launch School gives you the tools to do that, while providing a supportive community of classmates and teachers who are there to answer questions when you need help. I also liked the exam format, which was challenging but gave me confidence that I really understood the material.       Finally, the goal is to get a job after this and I found that the Core Curriculum gave me the foundation to do so. I built a couple of projects and a personal portfolio website with the knowledge and skills I gained from Core Curriculum, and was able to get a job within 6 weeks of starting to apply. I even had a few recruiters reach out to me based on the quality of my projects! I have been in my current position for 3 months now and have gotten excellent feedback from my manager and fellow developers. I have been given some assignments that required me to learn new things quickly, and I felt confident in my ability to do so because of what I learned at Launch School. If you want to have a good career as a software developer, I highly recommend enrolling in Launch School!

Completing Launch School's Core Curriculum and Capstone program was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. Launch School helped me build strong programming fundamentals, and Capstone taught me essential software engineering skills. Those two things allowed me to land an excellent software engineering position at Mozilla working on the Firefox browser.

The fundamentals Launch School teaches are table stakes for interviews for good engineering roles. You need to be able to break a problem down in a PEDAC-like way and clearly explain your approach. And you'll need to do this within a time limit and under pressure. In my job hunt, I encountered many interviews that were remarkably similar to Launch School live-coding assessments. There's no way I would have been as successful in real-life interviews if it weren't for those Launch School assessments.

In Capstone, you pivot from just programming to the larger world of software engineering. It's a big jump, but you'll definitely get the structure and support you need to pull it off. Capstone is heavily optimized to help you land the best software engineering role you possibly can - that's its only goal. So the curriculum is constantly being updated to reflect what students are seeing in their job hunts. (The two times I shared experiences from my job search, within a day, a Capstone staff member had updated the curriculum to incorporate those experiences.) You'll also have access to a large collection of real coding challenges students have gotten in recent interviews. 

And then the Capstone project! This is a large-scale, technically challenging project that you'll complete as part of a fully remote team. For me, the benefit was two-fold: 1) I grew tremendously as a software engineer by working on this project, and 2) the project played really well in interviews. It showed my interviewers I was able to understand a problem domain, have deep technical discussions and consider engineering tradeoffs. I also drew heavily from my project to answer behavioral questions and to prove I had solid experience working as part of a remote team. 

I could go on for days about Launch School. But I'll just say that, if you put in the work, Launch School absolutely delivers on its promise of a career-launching software engineering job.

When I found Launch School in my search for an avenue to enter Software Engineering, I was honestly a little annoyed. The slow path to mastery? What a devastatingly honest slogan. I'd rather something flashy, thanks.

But after sitting with it for awhile, with the experience and background of an educator myself, I knew it was the truth. In order to master something, you have to give yourself time. You need to learn from someone who knows more than you, can see the path further than you, and has your long-term best interest in mind. The more I looked into the pedagogy, curriculum, and goals, the more I came to trust. Once I decided, I dove headlong.

The end result? After I completed the Core curriculum and Capstone, I landed a Software Engineering role at a well-known tech company making over 3x my teacher salary; and it only took me 4 weeks to find it. I even had to turn down other great offers! And don't even get me started on how awesome my co-workers are.

What was my secret? I trusted Launch School and did what they said. Literally, that's it. The thing about mastery is it's not complicated — but it does take time, discipline, consistency, and really good guidance. The Core Curriculum sets you up to subsequently learn absolutely anything. Though you're drinking from a firehouse in Capstone, it was still incredibly doable because our foundation was ridiculously secure. 

In addition to changing my life through my career, Launch School changed me as a person. I'm now a problem-solver. Instead of getting frustrated, I get curious. Instead of giving up because "whatever it doesn't work," I look closer, investigate, and figure it out. Even my loved ones have noticed. Launch School has made me a better overall person because it's given me the confidence, the paradigm, and the experience to know that I can actually learn to do anything. 

Before I begin, I would like to establish the two core tenets behind Launch School's teachings that form the premise for this review:

• Learn slow to move fast
• Focus on the fundamentals and ignore fleeting trends

I'll explain why I think these principles are key and how Launch School accomplishes this, and then discuss how they helped me land my first proper SWE job paying above mid-level FAANG total compensation and my second job paying above senior-level FAANG compensation a year later.

First off: learn slow to move fast. Launch School inverts the schooling system we are all familiar with by mandating that students get at least an A- on their assessments. This forces students to prepare deeply, and it's common for students to take at least two months before attempting the first Ruby/JavaScript course (you get used to it and time needed per course falls over time). For example, one of the first lessons was about variable declaration/initialization/assignment, and learning it in excruciating detail was extremely tough. Yet spending time forming mental models and typing out explanations in assignments solidified my understanding, and once it clicked I was free from making such errors. This effect snowballs. Being able to learn about functions without difficulties regarding variables makes learning much easier!

Second, focus on the fundamental technologies. In Core, Launch School avoids teaching frameworks, and instead focuses on the core tools used by each segment of a web application. For example (and this is not an exhaustive list of the core tools taught), you learn how to construct an SQL query, rather than use a scripting language to do so. You learn about HTTP, then construct an HTTP request from scratch, and serve your own responses without external libraries. You'll use HTML and CSS to replicate a web page and, later on, JavaScript to animate its contents.

Why learn these core tools instead of whatever gets the job done? It's simple: these tools have been used for decades, and will continue to be used in the future. If you started by learning a library like React, what happens when there's an error that isn't documented? You would go into the source code and, suddenly, you're confronted with JS code! Moving jobs and want to try Vue instead? You'd struggle without an understanding of JS, since the React syntax wouldn't apply. However, understanding JS means that any time you're stuck, you can reach into the code and solve your problem. This applies to the other parts of the tech stack: understanding the fundamentals lets you understand related technologies much easier in the future.

As such, completing Core provides you with the coding skills needed to get multiple offers from top engineering companies (I had two offers after completing just the back-end portion). However, there is a final mental shift needed to become a solid software engineer, and that is where Capstone comes in. The close mentorship of the LS team allowed me to develop the following competencies I've observed in top software engineers:

• Problem-centric thinking
• Just-in-time learning (only after the mastery-based learning above)
• Vital soft skills in communication, teamwork, negotiations and more

Through my experience with Core and Capstone, I joined a cybersecurity company dealing with 10 trillion digital interactions a week and immediately hit the ground running as a software engineer. These experiences then snowballed and I'm now in a crypto fund handling large investments into decentralised finance and P2P loans. During the interview, I was questioned about my philosophy behind software engineering, and needless to say I was leaning heavily on everything I've experienced in Launch School.

I can safely say that my life has been transformed by Launch School, and I am incredibly grateful to the team’s vision of a new pedagogy in software engineering. Beyond engineering, the philosophy of Launch School, particularly that of mastery, has deepened my appreciation for slow-and-steady progress, which has helped me in my other hobbies such as language learning and music. The facets of my life that have been touched by LS continues to surprise me, and I can safely say this has been the most fruitful investment I've ever made in my life. If you are eager to challenge yourself to reach new limits, then Launch School is 100% the course to go for.

Once again, thank you so much for Launch School and I hope that the School continues to inspire others as it has inspired me.

Context: I currently work at Gatsby JS. I went through the capstone program from february 2021 to June 2021. I got a job in 6 weeks after i started my job search.

I'll start by saying, I cannot over emphasize how effective this program is.

I went through the capstone program starting in February 2021. This capstone program is easily one of the toughest things I've ever done in my life and also one of the most rewarding experiences. The program allowed me to form friendships with the right people and at the same time it gave me the tools necessary for a productive career as a software engineer.

I particularly want to highlight:
- In capstone, there are highly competent staff that make themselves available to answer questions
- I too was sceptic about the salary - but, I'm proof that every single person in my cohort got a salary above $100k and sometimes above $150k base salary.
- I use the same approach to tackle very complex problems i face today on the job as i did within my capstone project.

My fair warning: This program is for a person who can take the time to dedicate to it - I warn everyone - it doesn't matter if you have kids, are in a relationship, no relationship, no other commitments: the capstone program will take whatever amount of time you possibly have for about 4- 6 months so be ready. It is an experience that i regularly say, it was necessary but not something I would want to have to do multiple times in my life. It is hard and time consuming but also fun in a challenging way - if you enjoy the process of capstone - you will enjoy working as a software engineer.

To the one that is on the fence about the capstone program - I'd say:

1. What you gain with the capstone project is not necessarily just knowledge but experience - everything in their curriculum is pretty public so you could learn the content on your own. After being on the job for a while, i can tell you that it's pretty clear when someone has learned a bunch of concepts but can't coherently put them together in a way that a team would benefit from. With capstone - you work with a team, you build confidence in your ideas, and you build context for actual engineering problems.

2. The best benefit is probably the staff and research done by the staff - The staff plays an under-appreciated role in all this. The staff vets projects ideas to make sure they are actually industry relevant ideas. Each time a cohort hits the market, the capstone team evaluates how they hit the market and pivots based on the changes in the market. This allows you as a person to focus on learning and trust that when i go look for a job i am really ready. There are also working software engineers who act as mentors through the program to coach and guide you through the process.

3. After a certain point you are actually losing money if you try to emulate this program on your own - at one point I thought about just doing a 'fake' capstone project on my own or with some friends - and there were two things that made me reconsider. A. What if I am wrong about what i think would be a job relevant project and waste my time. B. How do i know what to study for a job I've never had when there's conflicting information on the web. Because of these two reasons I opted to 'trust the process' and signed up for the capstone program.

I hope this helps you whoever you are

The core curriculum moves from the basics of programming, OOP, cli tooling, testing, networking, DBs, html & css, advanced problem solving, the dom and api's. The focus is on allowing students to fundamentally grasp the problems at each layer of programming and understand why the current solutions are in use. The core curriculum really sets students up for unlocking what the school calls 'just-in time' learning - the ability to pick up new tools quickly because you understand the underlying problems they are trying to solve. 

Overall my experience with launch school was a positive one 

Things that I liked:
- I felt like the instructors gave enough help and there was enough community to push my learning forward
- The school seemed very receptive to feedback
- Because they were upfront about what kind of program this was and the pedagogy, i never felt like i was played.
- The content taught is directly relevant to my job experience and at different times i need to draw from almost all of the classes
- Staff is receptive and warm, you couldn't really ask for a warmer group of individuals who are dedicated to their jobs while also 

things that could have improved:
- I felt like there were times when i wasn't sure how much i was actually learning because i didn't know where or how to apply it - the program could have used more real world projects as a mandatory part especially around the end of the backend portion.
- There was a lot of written content to study. I would have appreciated more video content and some of the video content could use updating

Overall, for where I was in life, this was the best decision I could make at that time in my life. 


Now as a working Software Engineer at GatsbyJS, I find that i use the concepts learned in the core curriculum daily. I find myself consistently needing to come back to what I learned in core and coming back to my problem solving approach

Launch School, at least at the time of writing, does not do much marketing, if any at all. So if you are pursuing a career switch to software engineering and web development, it's likely that you did not first encounter Launch School at the top of a Google search result. Instead, you probably encountered those boot camps, advertising that you will become a software engineer or developer in a few months while charging you thousands of dollars for a curriculum you can find online for free. In short, Launch School is unlike anything that I just described. Their lack of marketing is just one of many of their distinctive traits that underscore how a great product or service can rely mainly on its quality to attract those who seek it. So if you've found Launch School, you've probably dug deeper than the first search results to discover a more rigorous pedagogy, without the heavy price tag at the end.

One of the first things Launch School has you read is their article detailing what Launch School is and isn't and whether or not it's a good fit for the prospective student. Unlike predatory boot camps where it's easy to join but hard to leave, there's no slick marketing involved that tries to lure you in as the unsuspecting student. Instead, there's full transparency and you do not feel pressured to join. Furthermore, their payment plans are flexible and reasonable. As a result, you are also not financially pressured to stay if you were to join and decide to leave. Most importantly, there are no "get-rich-quick" implications that you could become a professional in just a few months. Rather, their cornerstone pedagogy centers on the importance of mastery and first principles, cultivating skills through a slow but rigorous path. This approach is not just a contrarian mindset but something that they implement through their detailed curriculum and enforce by their rigorous written and live coding assessments. These standards ensure your mastery and that you have the proper mental models and foundations set in place before building on top of them with higher order concepts.

Earlier I acknowledged that the curriculum of most coding schools can be found online for free. Technically, that's true, and I personally resolved to self-study in the beginning of my journey. However, as I went on to discover, software engineering is a field riddled with rabbit holes of tools and technologies. Without the proper curriculum and guidance, it's tough to focus on the core principles. Launch School will thus act as your beacon, so long as you trust the process and persevere, your efforts will almost certainly reward you in the end.

These are the factors that make Launch School stand out in the ever-expanding field of coding schools. It's truly a hidden gem of a learning center, a place to not just learn but to personally grow alongside a supportive community of motivated students.

I started Core in September 2020 and finished in March 2021. I then started Capstone in May 2021 and finished in August 2021. Within a month and a half of interviewing after that, I had 3 generous offers.

I've been dabbling in programming since my childhood and even built database-driven applications deployed to Heroku, but it wasn't until I finished Launch School's Core curriculum and then immediately afterward completed the Capstone program that I felt like I was a software engineer.

The Core curriculum experience was exactly as advertised, and exactly what I was looking for: a rigorous and comprehensive deep dive into the fundamentals of object-oriented programming, deconstructing and understanding what happens at every layer of the OSI networking model and under the hood of common methods, mastering SQL queries and joins, understanding the JavaScript runtime environment, the event loop, and asynchronous callbacks, and getting experience with REST APIs. The methodology behind the program is leagues above other training options, because you're actively engaged in writing code, taking timed assessments and live technical interviews, building projects, and getting feedback from experienced mentors throughout the experience.

As much as I grew and learned during Core, however, Capstone was even harder and considerably still more worthwhile. While the go-at-your-own-pace approach of Core meant that we had time to soak in the material and make sure we understood it well before we could move on to the next course, the time-limited approach of Capstone taught us to not only quickly pick up a new language, a new framework, and new mental models related to deploying and running software systems on hardware, but to also then actually build and deploy an advanced application to solve a problem that no one had solved before, in a team environment. I cannot stress enough how important and invaluable this experience is both intrinsically, but also when it comes to being able to prove to interviewers, recruiters, and fellow engineers that you have been battle-tested in this industry, and triumphed.

What sets Launch School apart from other approaches is exactly this double punch of:
1) an unlimited time to master the fundamentals on your own during the Core phase, followed by
2) the time-constrained and pressure-driven Capstone experience in which you and your team research multiple software engineering problems and then pick one to tackle together.

Once you reach the Capstone phase with that underlying mastery from Core, you then not only learn many of the latest technologies and what problems each is addressing, but you even more importantly get to work on a joint codebase together with teammates, getting invaluable experience with system design, agile methodologies, and problem-solving along the way.

Lastly, it's worth addressing Launch School's pricing model, because it was also one of the driving factors for me. Many programs require a flat fee, regardless of whether you get a job after you graduate or not. But Launch School believes so much in their program that you only pay for Capstone if and when you are offered a position. Not only that, but because of the ISA, how much you pay Launch School is in proportion to your offer salary. To me, that meant that their financial incentive was aligned with mine--and this manifested itself in the high quality of the material and the support that we received.

I came to Launch School from a non-technical background, unsure whether I could be successful as a software engineer. The mastery-based curriculum at Launch School provided a carefully curated path to follow via which I could improve my technical skills, learn to speak knowledgeably about programming concepts, and practice breaking down challenging problems. By the time I finished the core curriculum, I was confident in my mastery of the fundamentals and in my ability to pick up new languages or frameworks as needed.
Launch School’s Capstone program took me to the next level. The strong foundational knowledge I gained throughout the core curriculum allowed me to quickly digest a wide breadth of advanced topics at a fast-pace and immediately use them. Along with my team, I was able to develop a tool that solves a complex real-world problem faced by engineers.
After finishing Capstone, I felt more than prepared to hit the job market. I was able to secure three job offers in just three weeks. All of the offers I received were over 4x the salary I earned in my previous career.  Launch School’s core curriculum + capstone program gave me all of the tools needed to establish a long career as a software engineer in which I am able to do meaningful work, solve interesting problems, and earn a high salary.

I was a working architecture professional for 4 years before finding Launch School. I had dabbled in scripting and cobbled together some experience in the Python data science stack, but I had never found a course/taken the time that would allow me to learn programming from first principles.

After nearly 18 months progressing through both Core and Capstone (build a project called Dendro in the process), I landed a job as a Senior Software Developer and tripled my total compensation from my previous role.

I cannot recommend the LS pedagogy or approach highly enough, it changed both my life and the lives of everyone else in my Capstone cohort. LS gives you not just the skills to find an entry level SWE job, but the methodology for building a lasting and successful career in the world of computer science. I'd give the program 10 stars if I could.

I first thought about the idea of learning to code around 2013. Some might remember the viral moment around that time that CodeAcademy had with their New Year’s resolution of learning to code. I didn’t really try, but I looked around on the Internet as to what this coding thing was all about. I came across truly random and terrible advice. I recall reading this awful blog post by someone saying that they finally learned to code by simply putting themselves in the “sweat locker” as they called it (just locked themselves in a room) for a few weeks and when they came out the other side they could finally code. What bullshit. I recall reading that I needed something called a text editor to code and Text Wrangler was suggested as a good free option. I downloaded the thing and stared at it; now what? Can you imagine the very beginning, not knowing really at all what any sort of code or software is? Maybe you’re there now.
In any case, you can sort of see this history on my GitHub profile. You can see when I first signed up and then did basically nothing for many years. I wasn’t actually trying yet, but I did poke around at the concept and it all seemed so confusing and complicated. At some point I decided to try a little harder. Information and resources online had gotten a little better, too. I did a couple things like follow a short rails tutorial that did nothing but confuse you. I started the frontend course at Thinkful. I read Chris Pine’s book. And slowly I started to see at least some of the things involved in software. I even thought about signing up for Dev Bootcamp (when that was around) and I put down a deposit and did about half the prep work. Ultimately, I backed out and asked for my deposit back; despite not being an expert in the field, I could sense and pick up on signals that this was not the right way to learn.
So I think I’d like to phrase things like this: I’m 100% certain that absent Launch School, I never would have gotten from there, to here. Meaning a zombie GitHub account and no real knowledge or skill to a well-compensated engineer at exactly the type of company that an engineer wants to be at. That’s a big hurdle to climb over between there and here. There are levels in every field, and Launch School is not a path to a basic engineering job, but a good career.
If you really want to get into software engineering, save yourself the time and trouble of the random walk through the desert. You could try and hack and slash your way forward using bits and pieces of un-targeted advice on the Internet. That’s difficult because things need to be taught in the right order and with the student’s current level of topic understanding in mind. You might look back 5 years from now and see a zombie GitHub account, skeleton knowledge, and not be much closer to your goal. Or you could trust the path (now well-trodden) that Launch School has forged. Follow their curriculum, keep at each section until you ace it, do Capstone, and you’re basically guaranteed to “get here.” I don’t know whether it will take you one year or three, but if do what they say, you’ll make it to the place you seek; that’s a virtual certainty. And yes, I believe Capstone (after completing Core) was a necessity in terms of a) further education after Core, b) preparing me to be able to land the good job, c) convincing myself what I’m capable of (i.e. self-confidence), and d) realizing that not everyone knows everything, and that’s ok, I’m still enough for now, i.e. to “Launch.”
Read Launch School’s marketing materials and see if they make sense to you. What I mean is, even without knowing whether what Launch School is saying is true (about how to learn), it’s possible to get a signal on whether it’s likely to be true. I got a good signal from Launch School before I actually knew whether they had the “goods.” See if you can convince yourself of the same. And in the meantime, here you have another person giving you a signal that they do.

Context: I completed the core curriculum over ~2 years while working full time. I resigned from my job and participated in the February 2021 Capstone cohort, and successfully launched my software engineering career immediately after.

—

Launch School is incredible. It's hard to overstate how effective it is at preparing you for a professional career as a software engineer

I had my fair share of doubts all the way through Capstone. I knew I had learned an incredible amount in Core, but I really didn't have any point of reference for how I compared to other people in the job market.

My confidence started to grow during the job hunt - as long as I was able to get past the HR checks for specific degrees or years of experience, things generally went better than expected. I was able to hold my own in technical discussions, and every engineer I talked to was blown away by our Capstone project - multiple people recommended I try to get funding and launch our capstone project as a business.

I ended up accepting an offer as a senior software engineer at an early-stage startup just 2 weeks after I started applying. I was nervous knowing that there was "nowhere for me to hide" on such a small team, but I was excited for the chance to work across the entire tech stack. I've been working as a software engineer for about 6 months at the time of this writing, and the further out I get from Capstone, the more I realize how incredibly well Launch School prepares you for actual working life as a software engineer. I've already taken on a huge amount of responsibility working across our frontend, backend, and infrastructure, and I'm actively involved in planning the future direction of our product.

At Launch School you learn the right collection of core fundamental topics to the correct depth to be an effective engineer. I've had to learn several new technologies on the job, but in every instance, it's been a straightforward process because I have the appropriate foundation to build on.

I am incredibly grateful that Launch School exists. Of all the education paths out there, it is the most practically effective while also being uncompromisingly aligned with the student's interests.

My early experiences with programming education were a huge influence on my decision to study at Launch School. I took classes at university, explored online tutorials, and even built out a few projects using walkthroughs. Though these approaches to learning may work for some, they never seemed to resonate with me. They normally lacked two things: A mastery-based approach to learning, and a bottom-up pedagogy.
Launch School's Core Curriculum is an excellent entry point for aspiring software engineers with little to no experience. This is due to not only the mastery and bottom-up approaches to learning, but also the self-paced environment. Learning fundamental programming concepts from the ground up finally allowed me to understand how to "think like a computer". Not only do I understand each character of syntax that I write, but I now can methodically reason about a challenging problem and solve it with relative ease. Also, the self-paced nature of Launch School made me confident that I had truly mastered a concept before I moved on to the next one.
Despite not teaching any frameworks or libraries, the foundation that Launch School builds has made learning new technologies relatively simple. Just a few months after finishing, I've become comfortable with React, Golang syntax, and AWS. Professionally, I've developed a much deeper understanding of how our organization's databases are utilized and how our web applications are developed and deployed.
Within just one year of part-time study, I went from "I have no idea what I'm doing" to "with enough time, I can build anything with code". That confidence boost alone is enough evidence for me to say that Launch School's learning model is by far the best I have ever experienced.

It’s hard to overstate the impact that Launch School has had on my life.  I consider myself a studious person - I took high school and college seriously, got good grades, and made an effort to find a career that aligned with my degree and interests.  I unfortunately found the options for my specific field of study limited, so I’ve spent the past 15 years of my professional life in a series of stable but largely unfulfilling jobs.  Because of Launch School, I am now in a field that truly interests me, and I’m on an income trajectory that will allow me to give back, provide a stable base for my family, and accomplish many of the things that make life enjoyable to me.
There are a few facets of Launch School, and especially the Capstone program, that make them such an effective springboard to a career in software engineering.  As someone who tried to learn a few programming languages and web development on my own, the structure that Launch School provides is important.  Even for someone who is focused and motivated, it can be hard to sustain the energy and interest needed to learn on your own without any feedback, any community, and any sense of how close you are to your goal.  Launch School provides all of these.  Knowing exactly what to study may just be the most challenging aspect of trying to learn on your own, because the programming world is both wide and deep.  While learning anything interesting is often time well-spent, it doesn’t necessarily get you closer to landing a paying job as a software engineer, which was my goal.
That is Capstone’s explicit goal as well, and it does a fantastic job of preparing you for both finding a job/nailing the interviews, and the daily work the job requires once you’ve landed it.  It is important to note that the type of jobs the Capstone program prepares you for are not entry-level jobs.  Official job titles of Capstone students often range from Jr. Engineer to Sr. Engineer, however they all effectively require multiple years of experience, have great starting pay, and often allow you to work on the kinds of interesting problems that entry-level roles often don’t have access to.
While the Capstone program prepares you incredibly well for your first job, that doesn’t mean that you’ll have all of the knowledge you’ll ever need from the start.  Your first role may require a language you don’t know, or it may require advanced problem-domain expertise, or it may use frameworks and tools you’ve never worked with.  And this is perhaps where the most lasting benefit of Launch School becomes apparent.  Because Launch School focuses on the fundamentals of programming, you have a solid base from which you can learn new material quickly and efficiently.  When you have to learn something new, and you most certainly will, that fundamental knowledge that was ingrained over years allows you to pick up concepts and identify patterns rapidly without getting bogged down by basic concepts.
All of this amounts to a Capstone program that truly does prepare you for a career in software engineering and helps you get past the first few hurdles that can be a barrier to so many.  There will always be that little bit of imposter syndrome when you switch careers to an entirely new field, but after having spent the first few months in my new role as a software engineer,  I can honestly say I do not feel out of place and I do feel like I have all of the tools required to do my job effectively now and in the future.

Context: I found and began Launch School in December 2018, completed Core in December 2020, and went through Capstone in Spring 2021.

I got my bachelor's degree in Computer Science, graduating in 2020. Yes, that means I did Launch School alongside school. It was long and difficult road to persist and finish - I paused my subscription/studies several times in the 2 years I went through Core, and there were times when I nearly let go of my goal of getting to Capstone. The thriving and encouraging community is a lot of what kept me motivated - seeing people I had studied with during 129 getting amazing jobs and producing technically robust Capstone projects. I never doubted that if I stuck with it, I would get the same results.

Why go through LS when I had a degree? Put simply, school gave me broad exposure to CS topics and a good breadth of knowledge, but doing things like working professionally and writing production software in a language I knew nothing about a few months prior is all thanks to the depth of my studies during Core. Depth is something a lot of people are missing, and it's the real "secret sauce".

During my job hunt, I had the confidence and belief in myself to turn down six figure offers and opportunities that would have surpassed all of my expectations for a first job a few years ago. That's the power of a strong support system and incredible peer group - you know without a doubt what you're capable of achieving. I ended up accepting an offer in just under 6 weeks for a position I am overjoyed with, making a previously unbelievable-to-me salary, and having technical conversations daily that would've sounded like gibberish to me a year ago. I will never stop talking about LS to anyone who will listen!!

Launch School gave me by far the best learning experience I've ever had. It took me two years to go through the entire curriculum, but it was worth every second. I don't have a college degree, and I had never seen a line of code in my life before Launch School, but the job I got out of the process came with an outrageously high salary (especially for Arizona), and I got the job in under two months after hitting the job market.

Capstone was key to get the results I got, but I think Core was where the magic happened. Not only did Mastery-Based Learning resonate with me as an education strategy, but it was also the best fit for my particular case. Since during Core I had a full-time job (and for a few months I even had a second job), the flexibility to study when and where I could was key to my success. Aside from that, the rigor with which I was assessed at every step of the way helped my confidence and skills soar, especially when it came to learning advanced topics fairly quickly like you do in Capstone and during the job search.

On the other hand, I loved having peace of mind knowing that at any point I could pause my monthly subscription, and that if I couldn't or didn't want to finish Core, I wouldn't be tied to an ISA. Once Capstone was around the corner and an ISA was part of the equation, I was certain that I was going to be successful because I had already witnessed time and again how professional, effective and intentional Launch School is.

After going through this process, I think that Launch School is not for everyone, let alone perfect. But if you don't care about how long the process may take, if you have grit and discipline, and if you want to launch a career as a professional software engineer with a top job, I think Launch School is the way to go. Please feel free to reach out via Slack, LinkedIn or any other way, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Happy coding!

I will start off by saying my Launch School experience has by far exceeded any expectations I had when signing up.  I have grown as a person and professional in ways I couldn't even have imagined. It's not just a school for software engineering, but rather a school for equipping its students with a completely overhauled and highly optimized mindset, as well as a 500 pc LS toolset, with a lifetime warranty, for use in constructing your new future. Furthermore, don't be intimidated by the words 'software engineer', that term encompasses many topics. You can always explore any of these topics further and/or focus on one or more as a career. In addition, you will be a more complete and valued developer/engineer as a result of having a mastery of the other fundamentals. Once you truly "learn how to learn" you will notice yourself applying these life-altering principles across all areas of your life. 
Prior to Launch School, I had been working in front-end web development for close to 8 years. In order to paint a fuller picture, I first have to share a bit of my background. I graduated High School in 1999, technology for the most part wasn't even a blip on my radar. If you were lucky enough to have a cell phone it most definitely wasn't smart, it was $16.53 per minute, $3.49 for sending a text message, and you had the 15-minute monthly plan with no rollover. I'm exaggerating a little, but not much. Anyways, I had taken one business/computer course in 10th grade, and I think we may have used Geocities for an hour or two to create drag and drop web pages with fire gifs and blinking text. Even for those times, it looked horrendous and served no purpose whatsoever. That was the extent of my intro to CompSci, and I was probably fortunate to get that versus other people of my age and complexion. Long story short, I attended Bowling Green State University following high school with the intent to play football and study sports marketing, but 1 week into school my girlfriend at the time let me know she was pregnant. 2 semesters later I was back home. However, while at BGSU a buddy of mine gave me a proper introduction to computers and emulators. My grades may have been better if not for that NES emulator!
After coming back home, I worked menial jobs for a few years before taking a job with a guy who contracted for FedEx Home Delivery back when it first launched. A little less than a year later I owned the route. It was decent money for a person my age, but the burnout and turnover rates were real. It was a stressful job, one poor guy even had a heart attack one morning while arguing with a manager. But, like I said the money was good and at the time it was allowing me to finance a side hustle co-producing a DVD Magazine. Unless you're 30 and up you may have never heard of a DVD Magazine, but they were pretty popular back in the early 2000's. Ultimately, we could see that everything was moving to the web and we wanted to be first. We were trying to build something along the lines of a World Star Hip-Hop before it was the “WOOORRLLDDD STAAARRR” we know now. Unfortunately, none of us knew how to code, nor did we know anybody who could code. Back then, companies were charging up around $100k for what would now be a $10-15k WordPress site. This price point is what ultimately led me to the path I am on today. A long and strenuous journey up several towering mountains, and down into many low valleys, but finally, I HAVE ARRIVED!
Launch School is what got me to where I am now, but as I mentioned, I have been in web development for the last 8 years. After striking out in our many attempts to secure development, I ultimately decided to go back to school and learn how to build a website in the summer of 2011. I attended a private institution and graduated with an A.A.S. focused on digital design. While attending school, I realized then, that I wasn't going to get the necessary skill set needed to actually build anything other than a static website, or hack something together using WordPress. Unfortunately, by this point, I was 3 semesters in and $25k down, in what was a 4-semester program. So, I saw it through and finished up, grappling with the knowledge that I had just dropped $30k in what I could have learned at the local community college for $5k, and still didn't know how to program. I share these numbers in part to let you know, "don't live with regret, forgo the debt." So more debt was out of the question in terms of procuring the programming knowledge I would need. This sent me down the spiraling path of tutorial hell.
Yes, tutorial hell is just as scary as it sounds. It is an endless cycle of tutorials, death by a thousand cuts style, in which you take millimeter-sized steps in completing a 30k marathon. Eventually, I did bite the bullet a few years into the struggle and enrolled in a PHP certification course at the local community college. I felt more confused after the class than I was going into it. But that's not all, I also purchased around 30 Udemy courses, a $400 course on Coursera, completed several tracks in Treehouse, Freecodecamp, Codeacademy, KahnAcademy, audited several Edx courses, and had various subscriptions to other platforms throughout the years. With all that, I probably learned 30% of what I've learned in just a little over a year at Launch School. To be honest in writing this, I have no clue why, or how, I stuck with it. But damn, am I thankful I did.
Finally, I'm going to let you in on why Launch School is so amazing. First, the cost, LS is $200/mo or $2400/yr.  At one point during the height of COVID, they were also providing financial assistance to students in need, but I'm not sure if that's still going on. A typical 3-4 month boot camp is $15k on the low-end. Second, integrity, they not only tell you but show you, in their free and extensive prep course, exactly what you're in for. Third, the curriculum is second to none. It is so in-depth and the assessments are like nothing I've ever experienced, the standard they hold you to is almost infuriating at first. That's until you get through it and can look back to appreciate it for what it is. The sense of accomplishment is unreal when you finish a module. Lastly, and this could have been number one, the community, the community of people are diverse, helpful, and super friendly. When you ask a question, it's usually answered within minutes. If you've ever learned online then you know what it's like to wait 2 days, if it ever gets answered, on a submitted question. You're connecting with a network of people. Folks that graduated years ago and are senior engineers are still on Slack providing newbies feedback and advice. The founder and TA's are consistently online providing more resources, articles, advice, study groups, etc.
Currently, I have 2 modules left to complete in the CORE Curriculum, and I have a goal in mind to finish by August. It would have been sooner, but due to money getting tight with COVID I had to start my job search somewhat early. As soon as I put open to opportunities on my LinkedIn profile my inbox was flooded with recruiters. Not soon after, I landed a 6 figure job, which was much more than I expected. Prior to accepting the offer, I was telling recruiters/employers I was looking for $75-80k/yr. After a couple of weeks of interviewing, I was turning down offers at that dollar amount. During my interviews, I was complimented several times on my Problem Solving abilities using the techniques provided by LS. The coding challenges were actually much easier than the problem sets Launch School provides.
I just want to touch briefly on job assistance, since it is not a direct offering of the CORE Curriculum. I would say it's provided indirectly. As mentioned above, the LS community provides most advice that may be needed, even going as far as to look over a resume or LinkedIn profile. Just the other day, I read an article on what counts as work experience. There have also been several posts on the forums from former grads/students that their current company is hiring. It seems to me once a company gets one grad, they seek out other LS students. For me, providing the tools necessary to nail the technical portion of the interview was all the assistance I needed.  I know what you may be thinking, that I had previous experience. This is true and it did help some, but for the most part, the job offers I had didn't really take my past experience into account because I was self-employed and most of my work didn't involve much programming or custom development. Just talking the talk, using technical jargon was not a skill I had over a year ago. Most importantly, prior to Launch School, I most definitely did not have the problem-solving skills necessary to effectively work on a team producing globally scaled applications.
If you have been considering a change and have any interest in some type of development, do yourself a favor and enroll in the prep course. It cost you nothing to get started but can provide you everything you've hoped for if you see it through. My only regret is that I didn't find Launch School sooner.

I've completed the Core curriculum earlier this year. Without attending to Capstone program, I was able to find a mid-level job. 

Core curriculum is a self-paced online course. They dive quite deep into the concepts that you need to know for modern web development. You must not compare this course with a 3-4 month bootcamp. You don't learn frameworks to make toy-applications. It's a serious start to a long software engineering career. As a successful grad, you could learn a framework and be productive with it within a fraction of a week. 

Although it's an online course there is a sufficient amount of in-person feedback from the instructors. Apart from that, there is an amazing community in Slack and Reddit. There are weekly technical/non-technical events, some of which are voluntarily led by the students. 

You are expected to develop a great understanding (up to a level that you could teach the subject) to be able to pass a course. If you only want to get into an entry-level engineering job in a start-up Core curriculum is still a good option. However, in my opinion, where Launch School(and eventually Capstone) really shines is to prepare you for getting into a position at an engineering-centric company where you get paid quite high to solve real-life software engineering problems. 

For context, I graduated Core in a bit under 8 months and am starting Capstone in August.

I came into Launch School with no expectations. It seemed good, and thought it'd be a good skill to develop as I worked towards product management roles. I didn't seriously consider that I'd end up as a software engineer.

I didn't have expectations partly because I had tried to learn how to program multiple times before in different years. I can remember 3 moments where I somewhat seriously tried to learn, but never got far (one of them involved a month-long stint at 42's "piscine" in Paris).

It's only been a bit over half a year after I started LS but everything's changed. It's easy for me to pick up new languages because Core went to such depth and am set on doing Capstone to go into a career as a software engineer.

In retrospect, everything else besides Launch School was noise. If you're interested in learning and having a career as a software engineer I couldn't think of a better option — at least trying Launch School out is a no-brainer.

If you're like me, you hate learning things without really understanding what's going on under the hood. LaunchSchool has "mastered" the art of mastery-based learning , to make sure you know well enough A and B before moving to a compounding subject AB. This way of learning is gratifying and forces you to deal with gray-areas in your understanding before moving on to the next unit, and they make sure of that with rigorous assessments at each stage of the way.
Make sure you are not in a hurry though in your learning journey, as this requires lot of patience on your part.

Instructors always give in depth code reviews and will catch your mistakes early on, giving you good coding habits right from the beginning, which I found super helpful as a complete beginner prior to joining LaunchSchool. 

Cons : I did not want to give any grade for job assistance as it is now clearly only available for students eligible to their captstone cohort, which comes by admission after finishing their core curriculum, and is tailored to US Citizens. But when i first enrolled at LS, there were Career Courses available as part or the core curriculum, and they suddenly removed it. If you re an international student like me, make sure you have a plan after finishing core, as you will then be on your own to tackle the job market. 

    In the summer of 2018 I experienced significant burnout at my job and I was miserable. The only escape from my job that I could foresee was to transition into software engineering as a career, which had only been a hobby at that point. The problem was that there was no clear path to “learn to code” without going back to college or to an expensive coding bootcamp, neither of which I could afford. Despite the plethora of free resources out there, I couldn’t find a clear path to become a software engineer.

    When I took a much needed beach vacation in the midst of burnout from my job, I miraculously found Launch School while trying to piece together my own bootcamp curriculum to follow. Launch School gave me that clear path forward that I was looking for in the wilderness of trying to learn to code. I have no idea how I stumbled upon them (they didn’t really advertise at the time), but finding Launch School has been life changing.

    I started the Core curriculum in earnest in April 2019. I had to study part-time around my full-time job. But because I no longer had to think about what to study next, I was free to focus on whatever course I was in. The mastery based learning approach freed up so much headspace in the learning process while instilling in me the fundamentals that have proved instrumental in my job as a software engineer. Then in the fall of 2020, I quit my job and started Capstone. Capstone took me from the solid foundation I built in Core to being competitive in the job market and even impressive to potential employers.

    I got an amazing six-figure job offer that was above and beyond what I ever dreamed was possible. And the mastery of fundamentals that I learned in Core along with the JIT (just in time) learning that I picked up in Capstone has allowed me to quickly ramp up at my new job. Learning the fundamentals deeply has given me the ability to pick up frameworks and technologies that I had never even heard of within a matter of hours. Launch School has been worth every penny and hour that I spent there because they clearly told me what to do to get to where I wanted to go. All I had to do was show up, focus, and trust the process.

Launch School has been critical for me while I made a huge career transition going into 2021. Last year, I was unhappy as a not-so-technical Technical Support Engineer at a startup after a long and challenging self-taught coding journey. Still, I would look at job interviews elsewhere and feel stuck due to huge gaps in my knowledge, lack of confidence when coding live, and general insecurity about what I knew vs. what I didn't know. Since I did come in with experience, Launch School has solved all of those problems for me and helped me make a pivot into my goal career, all in about half a year of full-time studies.

I want to highlight what made this program so fantastic for me: 1) The community – practicing with students who wish to practice the material until they've mastered it is HUGE. They aren't saying, "Okay, we finished this, let's move on." – they want to dissect code and understand all of the nitty-gritty details. 2) Having assessments. You can't move forward until you've truly mastered the earlier pieces. That might sound frustrating, but I'll tell you what's way worse: when you are trying to debug something in your code because you went lightning speed and used a library without knowing the fundamentals first. Learn your fundamentals and humble yourself to re-learn how to learn, and the new mastery approach will be so rewarding.

After completing the back end curriculum, I applied to one dream job, and it got it! I'm now in an SE program at Snowflake, and I'm so excited to be in the exact career that I wanted. 

Without a doubt, I can say that completing Launch Schools core curriculum is one of the most positive life-altering experiences I have undergone. Launch School instilled in me invaluable knowledge about web development, but its focus on mastery-based learning has changed how I think about education and approach life in general. The problem-solving skills I picked up well-attending Launch School have made me not only a more competent web developer but also a more competent person.

I initially became interested in web development while building an application based on one of my hobbies. Even though the application was nearly identical to the tutorial I followed, once I tried to alter it and make it my own, it started to fall apart. I didn't understand enough about web development's core concepts to know why the code I had copied worked, let alone make it my own. I reached out to a professional web developer friend and asked him to look at it with me. He asked me a few questions and explained that he could fix the site with me, but I was missing a ton of fundamental knowledge and if this was something I was serious about, what I should do is learn that first, not build a project I didn't understand. His advice led me to Launch School as this fundamentals-based approach he suggested was exactly what they were advertising.    Fast forward over a year later, and though it wasn't easy, it was worth it. After completing the core curriculum, I rebuilt my project from the ground up. Thanks to the fundamentals I picked up with Launch school, not only was I able to understand what needed to be done and do it, but I was also able to quickly pick up, understand and integrate new technologies into my project with confidence. By the time I was finished rebuilding my site, I had taken it to a level I hadn't even dreamed was possible before. When showing my project to my friend, he was blown away by how far I had come in such a short time. The same project helped me land an opportunity to work on a project with a team of professional web developers.

I am now building a career out of web development. Thanks to my time at Launch School, I feel confident in my ability to pick up whatever technology is required to get the job done. Though I was skeptical at first, trusting the process and basing my knowledge on problem-solving and fundamental skills has paid dividends. Attending Launch Schools is one of the best decisions I have ever made, and if you're willing to put in the time and effort, I have no doubt you will come to feel the same way.

Capstone has helped me secure, and perform strongly on, a Level 2 Software Engineer role, with no prior experience.
7 months on after finishing Launch School's Capstone Program, I’m now a strong-performing Level 2 Backend Engineer at Thought Machine, a high-growth, engineering-centric company based in London, UK, founded by a serial entrepreneur and led by ex-Google engineers.
I recently passed my 3-month probation where I received only positive feedback, with my manager commenting “I feel you actually had a lot of skills already, and over the past few weeks you've been working out how to apply them to your work here. This is generally what I'd expect from someone with experience.” All of this despite actually having no Software Engineering work experience prior to Launch School's Core Curriculum!
More specifically, this is what Capstone has helped me do:

• Pick up enough Golang in 2-3 weeks - on the side while preparing for and participating in various interviews - to complete and pass a code challenge for Thought Machine
• Ramp up quickly on Go, Python, gRPC and Protobuf, Kafka and Kubernetes to be productive on the job
• Understand, participate and contribute to most code design and architectural discussions on the job
• Own and deliver a small feature before the end of my 3rd month on the job, and with another feature about to start

The 1.5 years I invested into Launch School's Core Curriculum and Capstone Program, plus the modest financial costs (compared to the typical bootcamp, or a Computer Science master’s degree), has enabled me to skip the junior level (i.e. save 1-2 years of my career), and landed me a gross salary that’s very close to that of engineers in non-tech hub US cities, in a company that’s known for a technically best-in-class product and a culture of engineering excellence among clients, prospects, and industry observers.
With these results, I would not hesitate to say that participating in Launch School's Core Curriculum and Capstone Program was easily the best decision I’ve made in my career so far.

I was one of the very first Launch School students in 2016, having transitioned from their precursor program that was not yet focused on mastery. My original goal had been to find an entry-level, "foot in the door" junior developer role. When such an opportunity came to me while I was about halfway through the core curriculum, I rejected Launch School's advice to continue along the slow path towards mastery. I accepted an underpaid role with a startup, then another with a marketing company.

My strong foundation from Launch School allowed me to excel quickly in the second role, and earn four substantial promotions/raises in two years. Despite this success, my salary was only about half the average for a Capstone graduate in NYC. Another Launch School student, who hadn't even begun his programming studies until months after I took the job with the startup, had accepted a software engineer position with a cloud computing company and was already well on his way to being promoted to a senior dev role. I had discovered through firsthand experience what Launch School instructor Chris describes in a webinar; taking the first job available to you as you grow your skills can make it very difficult to land a great role with an engineering-centric company. I knew I needed to make a change.

Even after accepting a lead instructor position with a notable bootcamp, I was unsatisfied with my career trajectory. I spoke with Chris, who told me that with hard work I could qualify for Capstone. I worked furiously to complete the core curriculum, and joined the largest yet cohort of Capstone students. It was only once I joined Capstone that I saw the true power of "just-in-time" learning that is unlocked by a focus on mastery. In isolation these skills had helped me earn millions in additional revenue for my former employer, but spending each day being challenged by brilliant, like-minded developers opened up a new level of possibilities. I refined my understanding of higher level concepts, designed and built an amazing project with a distributed team, and landed an engineering role with a world-class organization led by a legendary tech entrepreneur.

My own hard work was integral in my achievements, but I can't overstate how important it was to have an organization like Launch School invest such significant time, energy, expertise, and resources in my personal and professional growth. They genuinely care that I succeed, and achieve an outcome that will bring me joy. Launch School helped me change my life, and I am forever grateful.

I attended Launch School from 2016-2018, first doing the self-paced full-stack core program and then the Capstone program.  Both parts were fantastic - well worth every minute and every penny I put into them.

Launch School's mastery-based curriculum emphasizes deep understanding of programming fundamentals that I now use every day as a full-time software developer.  Although these fundamentals are taught in Ruby and/or Javascript at Launch School, and I've found that the principles and mental models I developed apply to any and all programming languages.

The core curriculum was self-paced, which gave me the flexibility to consume the material at my own speed (some things were easy and quick, and I needed more time to master others) and on my own schedule.  The Capstone program was an opportunity to bring those skills into a collaborative project, learn collaborative tools (more advanced git, GitHub, project-management tools, etc.), get coaching around job searching and interviewing, and really prepare for the day-to-day work of a software engineer.

2 years later, I'm still at the great job that I found with the help of Launch School's curriculum and instructors.  I highly recommend this program to anyone serious about becoming a software engineer!

My journey toward software engineering started in August 2016 after feeling unsatisfied in my job and looking to make a change toward a more fulfilling career. After several months of self-study with online resources that didn’t give a clear outline of how to progress as a developer, I chose to enroll in an online bootcamp to learn Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript in 3 months with guarantees of finding a good “junior role” by the end.

However, after finishing the bootcamp in March 2017 I had a clear feeling that I wasn’t anywhere near the level that I needed to be for interviews and that my skills were built on unstable foundations. That feeling is what lead me to joining Launch School where the deep curriculum, fantastically supportive community, and mastery-based learning approach made me believe that I had found the answer to my search for successfully making a career change.

From the very beginning, I was blown away by the focus on learning the fundamentals and developing core engineering skills needed to land career-defining jobs. Within even the first few courses, I already felt more capable as a developer and more confident in my own abilities than I ever did in my bootcamp experience.

This extensive experience of building a rock-solid foundation of the fundamentals from the bottom-up proved essential once I joined the Capstone program. Where the Core Curriculum had built me into a strong developer, Capstone brought me to another level and polished my skills to the point that I could effectively learn complicated software topics and build with my team SpaceCraft: a real-time, collaborative REPL with a distributed architecture. In fact, our team has been contacted by several companies and teams who wanted our help to build their own REPL and it’s all because of how impressive our Capstone work has been.

And the end result? I’ve landed my dream job at DigitalOcean as a Software Engineer II for the Network Services team, skipping an entry level role and working on projects & technologies that I thought out of my reach just 2 years ago. And more than doubling my salary from my previous job!

Launch School has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who is willing to devote themselves to mastering the curriculum and trusting the process they have developed. There is simply no option among the competition that I’ve found to be better than Launch School.