The Core Curriculum represents the "Study" phase of Our Pedagogy and is where we employ Mastery-based Learning and take a bottom-up teaching philosophy to help students build long-term mental representations of progressively more sophisticated and integrated concepts. Everything in the Core Curriculum is deemed fundamental and is mandatory.

Phases of Core Curriculum

The Core Curriculum is comprised of three phases: Preparatory Work, Programming and Back-end Development, and Front-end Development. Each phase must be completed in sequence, and each course must also be completed in sequence. Below are individual courses listed by phase. You can click through to each course and view its syllabus. Every course has an associated assessment that all students must pass to demonstrate mastery.

After the Core Curriculum

The Core Curriculum represents the fundamental topics required to start building towards a career in software development. After finishing Core Curriculum, there's a good chance that you're ready for a job, but that depends on a lot of factors like where you live, what your compensation requirements are, what types of companies are near you, etc.

Most people take one of the paths below.

• Continue learning in our Advanced Electives. The Advanced Electives contain courses that focus on frameworks, like Rails and Backbone, and covers more advanced and integrated topics, like TDD and working with APIs. Because the surface area of these courses is so large and because we're no longer covering "things that don't change", we no longer employ a mastery-based learning system here and remove all assessments. To take the Advanced Electives courses, you must have completed the entire Core Curriculum and have an active subscription to Launch School. To see the courses in the Advanced Electives, register (for free) and log in and then click on the "Advanced Electives" tab in the course listing.
• Continue learning elsewhere. Most books and courses online cover either very beginning material or advanced material. After completing the Core Curriculum, you are ready to consume the latter. There are many books that cover frameworks or advanced practices, and you're now ready to take advantage of those advanced resources or books.
• Continue learning specializations that are related to software engineering, such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Self-driving Vehicles, Virtual Reality, etc.
• Pursue an advanced degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or another related field. Though not an extremely common path, many students have told us that the skills and knowledge they received in the Core Curriculum directly gave them the necessary pre-requisites to apply and be accepted into graduate school. Some graduate programs have hard requirements around undergraduate major, and no amount of training or self-learning will fulfill those requirements, so if this is a path you're interested in, make sure to look at your program's requirements first.
• If you're interested and eligible, apply for the Capstone Program.
• Apply for jobs. Outcomes depend heavily on your local market, your salary requirements, your interviewing ability, the types of companies near you, etc. For example, if you're in rural Argentina, that's a completely different market than urban Tokyo. In general, the Core Curriculum are the minimum requirements for a good job, but it may or may not be sufficient depending on your locale. Read the testimonials below to see how others have fared who completed the Core Curriculum but did not participate in Capstone.

Core Curriculum Testimonials

These stories are from students who did not participate in the Capstone Program, and either completed the Core Curriculum or stopped Launch School before completing the entire Core Curriculum. Despite not completing Capstone, many still landed great opportunities and there's a common theme of learning with patience. If you look carefully, you'll notice that many of these non-Capstone students also spent years at Launch School.

• This could be the program for you if you're looking for something that's more on the hardcore end of the spectrum

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  Ryan Gilbert

• The biggest take away that I got from Launch School was confidence. I solve software engineering problems for a living and every day I reach back to the patterns that I learned here.

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  Tommy Caruso

• Suffice to say, I'm excelling at my job and it's all thanks to a tremendous amount of hard work, dedication, and Launch School.

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  Alex Henegar

• Aside from being a good resource for beginners, Launch School has proven transformational to me as a prior startup founder with a few years of programming experiences and a MS in Software Engineering

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  Sonia Lin

• Launch School has given me the belief that I can accomplish anything that I put my mind to; perhaps the most valuable lesson of all

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  Adrian Carroll

• I've gained the attitude of constantly looking for better ways to do things, understanding my tools more deeply and working to become a better developer

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  Conrad Beach

• It is clear that the Launch School team really cares about offering the best program they can

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  Kristen Wilde

• I even believe I've learned how to learn better, and I've become a better problem-solver in general throughout the coursework

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  Patrick Brennan

• I got a different role making significantly more than twice what I had been making as a 'web specialist', putting me firmly in six-figure

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  Steve Kolock

  New York

• There was never a moment when I felt as though I was glossing over a key detail and that aspect of the program gave me the confidence to tackle increasingly difficult problems as the months went by

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  Chris Theodoridis

• It was the best investment of my time that I made. Even better than going to university!

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  Cristian Rennella

• Launch School has already given me not only the ability to create full stack web applications from scratch - it's also given me the confidence to get a new job writing code and solving problems

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  Alex Dzwonchyk

• Launch School gave me all of the core tools I needed to start building meaningful, useful software applications

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  Charlie Reese

• It [Launch School] truly prepares you to be an asset on day one of a real job in the industry.

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  Jevon Hayter

• Launch School doesn’t just teach you the fundamentals of programming and web development, but it also gives you the tools and context to learn anything you want to learn on your own

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  Hsuancheng Chen

• I'd like to share my experience with new Launch Schoolers, don't doubt, trust Launch School, follow the syllabus, make your efforts, your decision is 100% correct

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  Jamie Wen

• I've been working as a Rails developer for almost 2 years now. It's quite likely that I wouldn't have made it if I hadn't chosen Launch School.

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  Roy Huang

• This programme opened possibilities for me that would have taken me years to reach

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  Letladi Sebesho

  Johannesburg, South Africa

• Taking this program is one of the best decisions that I have ever made.

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  Yufei Chen

  Melbourne, Australia

• I landed what I consider being the perfect junior ruby developer job before even finishing the program

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  David Besserman

  Paris, France

• In the end I landed a great job after I completed my study at Launch School

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  Peter Karth

  Rocky Mount, NC, USA

• In the end I truly believe that Launch School changed my life

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  Daniel Schonfeld

  Los Angeles, California, USA

• Signing up (for Launch School) was a life-defining moment for me

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  Liam Brady

  Edinburgh, United Kingdom

• 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

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  Toni Cesarek

  Ljubljana, Slovenia

• Bottom line, complete this program and you will have all the skills you need to land a job or build your own products

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  Jeffrey Knox

  Edinburgh, United Kingdom

• After only 3 weeks of finishing the program I was working full time as a Jr Developer in an amazing company in downtown Toronto

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  Eduardo Poleo

  Toronto, Canada

• This is the course to go for to get a concrete foundation on programming

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  Sheng Yeong

  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• It's probably the best investment (time and money) I did for myself in a long time

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  Arjun Rajkumar

  Bengaluru, India

• This program is by far the most advanced, cost effective way of learning how to be a real programmer and get paid like one

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  Gus Pares

  Miami Beach, FL, USA

• I highly recommend Launch School's program for anyone who wants to learn how to code and land a job as a software engineer

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  Robert Jewell

  New York, New York, USA

• The ones that I had on my short list were Bloc.io, Thinkful, General Assembly, and Launch School. I chose Launch School because it was the only one that was forcused on building students a robust foundation and because its model allowed me to work through the courses at my own pace

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  Dito Hartoto

  Melbourne, Australia

• If you are considering doing a bootcamp or any sort of online course to become a web developer, you have found the one - Launch School

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  Yvette Gonzalez

  Chicago, Illinois, USA

• The true value of this course is actually learning how to think like a developer, how to approach your problems, and how to seek out the answers

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  Patrick Ng

  Brooklyn, New York, USA

• If you're really considering becoming a Web developer from scratch, this is the right place for you

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  Roy Zinn

  Tel Aviv, Israel

• I highly recommend Launch School for beginners to web development or programming in general

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  Anthony Licari

  Queens, New York, USA

• In just 2 months after completing the last course and submersing myself into the local Rails community, I got an offer as a Rails developer from a Fortune 100 company

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  Robin Paul

  Austin, Texas, USA