Launch School

I studied Law and Economics and got a job in administration. I soon found out that this job wasn't for me and I found out that writing code was a lot of fun. Before joining Launch School I was learning web development on my own for 2 years. I went through courses and videos on Youtube, CodeSchool, TeamTreehouse, Lynda.com, etc.

I learned a lot but I lacked the fundamentals and problem solving skills that good employers are searching on the market. Launch School gave me a lot of knowledge on web development. We did a lot of coding challenges with the instructors and when I got my first job interview I was able to answer most of the technical questions and finish coding exercises they gave me.

Launch School also provides weekly live sessions. This is basically pair programming with an awesome programmers such as Chris or Kevin and what I've learned is that programmers are stuck with coding problem a lot more that I imagined. But when I took other online courses this was not obvious. Teachers were writing code without any mistakes and without searching the documentation on the web. At Launch School you will see the reality and the instructors will tell you the truth about learning to program.

If you would ask me what are the most important things to get from novice to job ready. I would say,

1. Get great teachers
2. Learn and practice on the fundamentals
3. Read and write code every day

There are a lot of resources on the web to learn and practise coding. But getting great teachers that would help and guide you on your learning journey is probably the hardest thing to get on your own. You can get everything listed above and more at Launch School. All you need to do is devote your time and energy and learn every day for few hours.

I am grateful that Launch School exists. It helped a lot of people to get their dream jobs. I still can't believe that I went from a job that was basically shuffling papers to a job that lets me build an app for Olympic games.

 

I attended Tealeaf Academy and finished the three courses they offer teaching web development with Ruby and Rails.

When I started the course, I had no development experience. I wasn't even "technically savvy".  I was looking to transition from a career in education as an English teacher.  I am now a full-time software engineer.

The curriculum and support that Tealeaf provides can level up a hungry student's abilities very quickly. The courses are not easy, but if you are willing to work hard and put in the time, you will learn the skills of a professional web developer.  

Their pricing is competitive and delivers a lot of value. Since the course is 100% online, you can finish the course on your own schedule from anywhere in the world. 

The instructors are kind, personable, and talented teachers. There is round-the-clock support from teaching assistants located all over the globe.

If you're serious about learning web development with Ruby. I don't know of a better option than Tealeaf Academy.

My background: Computer Science degree, decent HTML knowledge, and had a little bit of experience learning Ruby and Rails on my own.

If you have a CS degree and want to be a Rails developer you will be a very legit developer if you make it through both Rails courses. The courses are not trivial. I worked about 3 hours a day on assignments 6 days a week for 6 and 8 week sessions.

After completing the courses and continuing to study and build a couple projects on my own I got a 75k job as a Rails developer at a startup. Then I was offered a 100K+ job at a very large company as a Ruby developer. 

I cannot possibly recommend this program enough. If you don't want to work 3 hours a day you will not REALLY learn Rails. If you do want to work 3 solid hours a day (or more if you do not come from a CS background) then don't take classes. 

If you make it through there is a pot of gold at the end. Work hard. The instruction is incredible and well focused. Very professional. I owe them a lot for getting me on the correct track rather than me trying to read 10 Rails books and try to cobble out a strategy. These guys know what they are doing and are incredible teachers.

** First of all, I just finished the second course out of three. I’ve learned more in those first two courses than everything I had learned on my own combined. It was the most rewarding educational experience I have ever had. Now the crazy thing is that as I am about to start the third course, I am not even half-way done with everything there is to learn at Tealeaf! If I learned that much in the first two courses, I can’t imagine what the third one is going to be like. ** I think my story is pretty similar to a lot of you that may be looking for a bootcamp. I’ve been messing with computers and “coding” since I was a kid. I thought I was cool because I could write some HTML and CSS. I could build some websites for people that looked pretty, but I couldn’t really add that much functionality to them. I needed to look for a plugin or script to do everything for me. None of them did exactly what I wanted them too, and there’s nothing I could really do about it except hope someone else did it and released it for free. I had a bunch of ideas for projects I wanted to make and I decided that I was going to teach myself how to program. I went through some basic free tutorials (codeacademy, etc.) and learned some JavaScript and PHP. I took a free MOOC on python and made some games. None of it went deep enough though, I didn’t really feel any different than when I taught myself HTML. I could do some little tricks, but I still could build a real, working application, and I certainly didn’t understand why or how any of what I was doing worked. So, at this point I started looking into bootcamps. I was really drawn to the bootcamp model because it was total immersion in the language and it took you from little knowledge to full-fledged developer. The first thing I noticed was the time and monetary commitment necessary to do one of these bootcamps. I work full-time, not as a programmer. I’m newly married. I don’t live in SF or NYC. I don’t have a house I can get a second mortgage on to afford one of these. I didn’t really fit the in-person bootcamp model. So I decided to look into online bootcamps because I didn’t need to quit my job, move half way across the country, or pay a crazy amount of money. I was really between Bloc and Tealeaf Academy. Both of them are great, but I think Tealeaf really fit my learning style and personality a lot better. Tealeaf, first of all, is the most reasonably priced bootcamp, IMHO. Second, the way they approach the subject matter is unique, but makes the most sense to me. Instead of introducing you to a very superficial level of a bunch of different web technologies, Tealeaf goes deep, VERY deep into Ruby on Rails. (Makes sense, since it’s a Rails course, doesn’t it?) Let me explain a little more about how they teach. Tealeaf doesn’t just teach you how to follow Rails conventions to make an application. They teach you how bend Rails to your will to make it do what you want. They teach you all the Ruby behind the way Rails does things. They teach how to build the functionality you want, instead of copy and pasting gems in. For example, we built our own authentication system and two-factor authentication for an application we built. Why is this important? One of the main reasons I wanted to do a bootcamp was to learn how to build anything I could dream up. That is exactly what Tealeaf is teaching me. Another key difference for Tealeaf is that they have a set curriculum of applications you build. A lot of other bootcamps, have you build a couple projects and then select a “Capstone” project to work on. I like the way Tealeaf does it because I trust the instructors to pick applications that will cover all the skills I am going to need much more than I trust myself. Also, since the instructors have done these projects a few times, they know all the “gotchas” that you are going to run into, making support much faster. Also, all the other students in you cohort are working on the same projects, so it makes for a much more lively community and shared experience, something you might expect to be missing in an online bootcamp. The final key point of Tealeaf that I love is that it is completely self-paced. Course 1 and course 2 are both split into 4 “lessons”, while course 3 is split into 8. Each of those lessons is self-contained. What I mean is that if you take 2 days to do one of those lessons, that’s completely fine. If you take 2 weeks, that’s fine too, the people in the discussion boards will be people working on the exact same thing you are, even if you “fall behind” some other people or “jump ahead” others. And the TAs and instructors are in all of them, waiting to pounce on any question you may have. Seriously, I don’t know if I’ve had a question that went unresolved for more than 30 minutes. And that’s not even including live sessions and office hours. Do yourself a favor, do a lot of research before committing to any one bootcamp. I did, and I think it paid off when I decided to do Tealeaf. I’m extremely confident in my ability to get hired once I finish the third course. ** UPDATE ** So just 1 month after finishing the courses at Tealeaf, I had 2 job offers. I am now working as a Web Engineer for a startup. I had a few interviews and tests and I felt very confident because of what I had learned at Tealeaf. The people I spoke to were usually very impressed with my knowledge, especially because we had covered testing so much. All in all, I can say doing Tealeaf Academy was just about the best decision I have ever made. I'm very excited to start my new career now :)

They charge $199 to teach students to ‘self learn’. There are no projects at all. The instructors are quite judgmental. You get an answer wrong in the study session and they’ll reach out to the owner Chris and complain and that’ll be on your record even though the whole point of study session is to attend and learn. After reading the previous reviews I can confirm Ableism and Racism does exist here. 

Save your time and money and learn by making projects and on a much faster pace. There’s a whole community out there willing to mentor and help aspiring developers.

I just got hired as a junior software developer at an amazing company in LA making 20K more than I was making previously! This would have never happened had it not been for Launch School's amazing program.    I majored in psychology and had never coded before starting the program. I studied for 5-6 hours every night for a few months and acquired strong engineering skills that made me feel ready to start applying for jobs. After spending some time looking, I received a call from a local company inviting me for a three hour, in-person technical interview. And guess what? When the interview came along I was prepared and in the end, received an offer from the company.    If it wasn’t for the in depth material covered at Launch School, I don’t think I would have received the offer. The strong emphasis on fundamentals, exercises and code challenges (especially some of the data structures and algorithms problems) gave me a lot of confidence growing into a software engineer. But what I believe really tipped the scale in my favor is the portfolio of projects I built throughout the program. Some of them are major, production quality and fully tested apps that really impressed the lead engineers at the company. I believe anyone can build simple apps following a tutorial. One of the reasons Launch School is so unique is that you learn how to build production quality applications where you get to learn how to make engineering decisions and tradeoffs. This is how you differentiate yourself from graduates of most other bootcamps who spend a few weeks on one or two frameworks and build toy apps. At Launch School, we spend months to learn to bend frameworks to our will while implementing advanced engineering principles into our apps.   In the end I truly believe that Launch School changed my life. For those of you who are working through the program - just have faith. Make sure you work through the curriculum, participate in code challenges, build projects and stay positive. Once you get to show what you have learned in your interviews I promise good things will happen!

My background is not in computer science.  Before starting the Launch School curriculum, I had never even opened a text editor.  Less than a year later, I've accepted a job at a fantastic company, making quite a bit more than what's average for juniors in my city.  Do I think I could have learned web dev. on my own? Yes. Could I have been this succesful this quickly? Absolutely not.

I took advantage both of LS's self-paced courses and the Captstone Mentoring Program.  The courses stress the fundamentals.  Although the curriculum is Ruby-heavy, the emphasis is not on "learning Ruby," but learning how to solve problems with code, not just "learning Rails," but learning the concepts behind it and the habits of mind necessary to tackle the challenges that web dev. throws at you.

As happy as I was with the courses, the Capstone Program just blew me away.  The amount of face time I was given with a senior dev. was outrageous. This is not an hour-a-week deal--I was on a Hangout talking programming, getting impromptu lectures, or pair programming with my mentor nearly every evening. My learning was guided: there was never a time when I didn't know what to do next or what to focus on. And I was pushed, pushed far harder than I'm likely to have pushed myself.

The result? I became not just someone who dabbled in code, but truly, a professional developer.  I acquired the knowledge and skill necessary to succeed in the field.  Companies agreed.  I got several full length interviews and received job offers from all of them. I have so much to learn, but LS has put me on some seriously firm footing.

Don't get me wrong--the program is not magic.  It's a LOT of work, but if you've got the aptitude, the work ethic, and the appetite for success, you can go far, fast in this program.