Launch School Love, Appreciation, & Results

I had been working for ten years in a different industry and was ready for a career change. I was at the point where I needed something beyond self-study to prepare me for a career as a developer. Luckily, I found Launch School.

Jason Overby

There is one effect on me during my time at Launch School which I absolutely cherish. That is new found confidence. Because of my grounding in the fundamentals, I feel there is nothing in the field of programming and web development that I cannot eventually learn.

Eric Ricketts

Launch School has imbued practical knowledge, habits for learning, and approaches to problem solving that I didn't have before. Having all of these opportunities has also cost the fraction of any CS degree or bootcamp, and the level of know how and the approach to solving problems is incomparable to bootcamps that cost 7-10x as much.

Austin Miller

A great aspect of the Launch School experience is the wonderful community! There is nothing more motivating than meeting and growing alongside other like-minded individuals who share the same goal, and I am very thankful for the friends I made along the way!

Earl Veloso

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.

Caleb Smith

What a great ride it's been! I feel more accomplished after ~12 months of LS than after 4 years of high school and in some ways 4 years of college.

Zachary DuBow

I didn’t just want a job, I wanted a rewarding career where I could meaningfully contribute and grow for years to come. With the baseline knowledge and habits established in the core curriculum and the intensity of the Capstone program, I feel well prepared to stay relevant across an ever-changing industry.

William Mills

After some thought, I gave up on trying to finish the program in X months. Instead, I would dive deeper and move slower if it would help with mastery. That change in perspective, while simple, was exactly what I needed. Every section of the course had layers and layers of richness. If I was stuck, I'd smile because there was some magic waiting for me in the process. I feel like I'm soaking up the tacit connections and feeling more fulfilled than I can put into words. I don't want it to end.

Ricardo Gonzalez

I'm achieving what I never got in other programs, which was an overall perspective on how software is made (web applications in particular).

Caleb Heath

I just accepted an offer for a position as a full-stack software developer. During the interview process I had to complete an iterative coding project and the feedback I received on my code was that it was very well thought out, clean and easy to follow. I attribute this to the concepts and methodologies we are taught at Launch School.

Jason Slusarchuk

Through the core curriculum alone, I was able to build integrations with multiple CRM's for my organization, automate workflows and develop an entirely automated organization-wide report. I started writing JavaScript for work before the curriculum covered JavaScript, but because of the way in which programming was taught at Launch School I picked up the basics and was productive within a week of trying.

Jacob Coker-Dukowitz

I have gained a knowledge of software engineering that seemed impossible a year ago, in addition to learning the importance of digging in deeper when faced with difficult problems, rather than walking away.

Laura Davies

The biggest thing that learning fundamentals and progressing through the 100-level courses has done for me is restore a sense of confidence in my own capabilities. I've spent the entirety of my adulthood losing faith in myself on many fronts - Launch School has enabled me to turn that trend around, plain and simple.

Aman Bal

After completing the curriculum, I now find myself able to dive into open-source code, even in languages that weren't on the curriculum. The level of focused, methodical thinking required to make it through Launch School makes learning code bases and languages just a matter of setting aside a couple weeks' time.

Nicholas Pizzigati

I realized that Launch School sees learning software development as a lifelong journey of mastering a craft, not learning to code in three months in order to land a job. Launch School is honest and transparent with what they offer.

Jeremy Stryer

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!!

Sheila Babadi

More than anything, LS has provided me with the solid fundamentals and best practices that I know will be the bedrock of my future career in software engineering. LS has such high expectations of its students that, when you embark on the Core Curriculum journey, it becomes built into you to have those same high expectations for yourself.

Richard Morris

Launch School gave me confidence. My background is in statistical analysis and economics, and I always felt like I was just winging it at my job even after years of college and grad school. With Launch School, I was deeply learning something for the first time, and actually doing it with intention.

Fernanda Franco

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

Ryan Gilbert

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

Will Lotherington

I would not hesitate to say that Launch School was the most well-structured and effective learning experience I’ve ever had the pleasure of participating in.

Nick Miller

Launch School has provided a warm and loving community in a time of significant isolation. The sincerity of the school's purpose has drawn so many wonderful individuals together and encouraged us to really engage in a way I have not experienced with other remote relationships. I've definitely made lifelong friendships thanks to Launch School!

Missy Lovegren

Launch School’s Core and Capstone programs are life-changing experiences. It’s difficult to overstate how much they already have and will continue to improve my life for the rest of my working years. Everyone has that dream of making six figures, but Launch School helped me achieve it.

Austin Miller

I've retrofitted a legacy gem to work again without much help, though it's very limited it one it can do. I also contributed a small feature and a bug fix to a VS Code extension written in Typescript.

Iuliu Pop

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

Roy Zinn

Tel Aviv, Israel

I think the most important thing that I have realized while going through the Core Curriculum is learning how capable I am when it comes to learning.

Raul Romero Cano

The flexibility of Core is great. I needed to pause several times and it was easy to pick up where I left off without wasting money. I also very much appreciated how it was self-paced and eliminated the struggles of a synchronous format.

Natalie Martos

Maybe it just took me a level of maturity to really appreciate the slower pace but I wish I had taken this approach or at least been exposed to it before college.

Ian Eustis

I appreciate the emphasis on breaking down problems into manageable steps when approaching large, complex problems. I have found that I feel much more comfortable when confronted with a problem where I can't immediately figure out the solution

Adam Trotta

Working on my fundamentals at Launch School has grown my professional skill-set, improved my ability to learn new topics, humbled me greatly, and boosted my confidence in myself more than any of the degrees I've earned. It really is an experience altogether different from anything else I have done.

Kyle Ledoux

I came into the Launch School core curriculum with only a 2 month 'Intro to Comp Sci with Python' EdX course under my belt, and I'm finishing it confident that I have the tools to grow as a developer and make this a career.

Nick Miller

For the past two years I've been singing Launch School's praises as a coding school. I knew I was learning valuable skills, but I had to trust the process and hope that my efforts would eventually pay off. Now that they have, I can recommend Launch School as a life-changing opportunity.

Ben Zelinski

The great number of exercises helped cement the content of the course. The PEDAC Process is invaluable. I have finally understood that my main limit when dealing with code problem, was that I was rushing to coding, without really fully understanding all the requirements.

Demba Siby

I built and launched a couple WordPress websites late last year. What I learned from Launch School helped me better grasp what a CMS like WordPress does beneath many layers of abstraction. Understanding fundamentals and how to read documentation also made it possible for me to play with C# and Unity over the Xmas holidays which was a lot of fun and a brand new learning experience.

Sephora Maltais

Thank you for creating Launch School and helping so many of us discover software engineering in a meaningful and life-changing way.

Christian Larwood

I am coming from a bootcamp where even though it was an in-person course, I am receiving loads more feedback from the Launch School staff.

Zach DuBow

I was initially skeptical of the value of PEDAC, but I stuck with it, and can now say it’s one of, if not the, most important lessons that I’ll take with me from LS. It’s improved my ability to systematically work through interview-style coding problems as well as plan new projects.

Scott Graham

Being able to look at dozens of lines of errors in Terminal, find the problem, sift through hundreds of lines of code and fix the problem is a result of Launch School's mastery of fundamentals approach. If you spend any time on other online "bootcamps" you will covet that skill.

Nathan Classen

At the top-level Launch School had two primary benefits for me - (1) Helped me build a complete-enough mental model for web app development to (2) feel confident applying what I know and learning further material as-needed.

Andrew Doss

I was able to join a company in a new domain with a new tech stack because Launch School doesn't focus on the hot topic of the day but the more important underlying ideas and concepts

Michael Mentele

San Francisco

I have built 3 things thanks to Launch School. I built a local e-commerce web app in Rails. I have built an authentication & view component library in Crystal lang. Although Launch School didn't teach me Crystal, Launch School taught me enough core concepts to learn on my own.

Andrew Crotwell

Launch School does a great job in shielding you what you don't need to know, and gradually taking a step back to introduce topics that are necessary at that moment. This makes it easy for someone with zero exposure to really follow along without feeling like they missed some fundamental information.

Daniel Lew

The staff and community is downright amazing here as well. People ask interesting questions, are eager to help, and want to go out of their way to keep it amazing so I appreciate the staff doing a good job in fostering that type of community.

Reilly Knutson

Mastering fundamentals enabled me to pick up similar technologies easier. Although I don't know python programming language, I am able to understand python code because of the object oriented fundamentals I learned in JavaScript and Ruby courses.

Avshar

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.

Ben Semel

I gained a lot of confidence in myself not only as a programmer, but also a person as well. This was definitely the most transformative experience of my life in all areas.

Abhi Reddy

I have never had such clarity and confidence in learning development than I do now. I bounced around a lot of different resources in the past trying to self study and it wasn't until I really buckled down with Launch School's core curriculum that I discovered that I am capable of understanding this.

Hans Elde

Going through the Launch School back-end curriculum made learning to program incredibly easy compared to learning on my own. It's a night and day difference.

Matthew Clark

Capstone has helped me secure, and perform strongly on, a Level 2 Software Engineer role, with no prior experience.

Kelvin Wong

All of my professional experience has been in recruiting, which is basically sales. When I first joined Launch School, I wasn't sure if I had what it took to solve technical problems. However, I trusted the process. I'm now astounded by some of the more difficult problems I'm able to solve. A good education is supposed to be transformational. Launch School delivers on that promise.

Hernando Delgado

The structure of the curriculum is well done and shows extensive care has gone into how to introduce concepts to students. I always felt I was on the right path and did not need to look at outside resources much beyond general curiosity.

Vince Bundage

I have loved my learning experience for the past 5 months in here. I can't help but compare it to college, because I am in my last semester of it. Of course I miss seeing people in person in LS, but I have learnt a lot more and with more depth in here.

Juan Garcia Moreno

My problem solving skills also seem to have gotten increasingly better, both on programming and non-programming matters. Thanks to LS, I have really internalized the concept of looking at problems at a high level first, and then break down the steps to solve them.

Raul Romero Cano

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

Sonia Lin

I really value the culture of high standards that Launch School has created. The people in this community consistently encourage each other to push their limits and bring their best efforts. I have studied coding previously in a variety of settings, but I have never been this focused and invested in improving my skills.

Josh Hinman

The focus on problem solving early on has been a big game changer for me in general. Overall it's made me more confident in my abilities to critically think and get past roadblocks.

Stephanie Malek

The strength of the community means I haven't felt isolated (which was a previous concern) despite the fact I left my job, moved to a new country and started studying full time during a global pandemic.

Laura Davies

The stress on solid fundamentals is one of my favorite aspects of Launch School! I recently got into video game development as a hobby, and learning the basics of C# for the Unity game engine was easy thanks to my good fundamentals.

Earl Veloso

Learning fundamentals has helped me with confidence in learning new material. The best part is, when I read about more advanced topics, I am able to draw upon what I've learned here to frame my mind as I'm learning something else.

Linus Phan

The pedagogy of this curriculum was fantastic. I learned so much about myself and what it takes for me to learn.

Ian Eustis

The community is a big part of what makes LS such a wonderful and encouraging place, and I think that it starts with how involved LS is in responding to messages and getting involved in discussions on Slack. It seems to me like LS has cracked the code much more than most on how to make a vibrant and engaging online learning environment.

Scott Graham

Knowing when to move on and circle back at a later point, if necessary, has been a skill I did not expect to come away with from the curriculum, but stands out as one of the most useful since it’s so transferable to other areas of my life.

Kevin Counihan

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 Launch School. The coding challenges were actually much easier than the problem sets Launch School provides.

Steven Alston

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

David Besserman

Paris, France

The focus of Launch School on learning how to learn made its entire program worth its money. It's had a lasting impact on other areas of study for me.

Nabil Kazerouni

I have a huge amount of gratitude to everyone involved in Launch School. From the core values of the school, to the professionalism of every staff member and the type of community that has been fostered. This has been one of the best and most rewarding educational experiences I have had. Thank you.

Laura Davies

Backend core has given me a solid boost in my work as a data scientist at a software startup, and I think the skills I have gained were a significant factor in recently receiving a more senior level.

Andrew Doss

After finishing the Core Curriculum, it seems that I could pick up any language or framework and build almost anything I want to.

Drew Holbrook

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

Patrick Ng

Brooklyn, New York, USA

My ability to maintain high-level and low-level technical conversations at work discussing everything from implementation to problem-solving has grown exponentially. It's made me closer to the engineers I partner with and broadened my capacity at work.

Nabil Kazerouni

The number one result I've gotten from Launch School has been confidence. I feel like I've developed a strong understanding, and have honed my technical communication -- and the written assessments have been key to that.

Bharat Agarwal

Launch School doesn't teach you how to build a facade that helps you land interviews; they guide you to become a person with the valuable skillset needed to actually land the job, and to be a valuable team member.

Will Lotherington

After completing the back-end portion of the core curriculum, I have much better clarity on a lot of the programming concepts, and have a better handle on my emotions as they relate to impostor syndrome when it comes to being able to program.

Matt Pringle

I remember my first tutorials, even good ones. I thought then that I was autonomous, but that feeling never lasts long. Now, after learning fundamentals, I'm never really stuck anymore. I still make a lot of mistakes, but nothing a search in the docs and a few well-placed debugging statements can't resolve.

Laurent Guinotte

The assessments challenged how I think and showed me how much I had progressed at each step of the way. The rigor and required preparedness for the assessments greatly improved my ability to form my technical thoughts into more cohesive meaning.

Vince Bundage

What I still enjoy most is that Launch School is not just teaching me web development but helps me to grow as a developer. I see this in every day work not related to Launch School.

Christina Unger

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

Yufei Chen

Melbourne, Australia

The thing with Launch School is once you are done, you will realize just how fundamentally necessary everything is. Suffice to say, I have finished the core curriculum and was promoted to a DevOps engineer at my current company.

Josh Crane

I still remember the feedback I got after my first interview. It was thoughtful, thorough and I could feel that the instructor cared. It was a transition point for me as I understood I could trust you guys to help me on the learning path.

Catherine Emond

With the knowledge learned even just in the back-end portion, I feel confident enough that I could apply for software dev jobs now that I would have had no business applying for even three months ago; let alone, that I can write my own real-world applications now.

Nicole

The interviews were great! I was very nervous before taking them, but now I realize that they were among the most helpful experiences I've had during the curriculum

Radu Adrian Constantin

I can't speak highly enough of the support of both the staff and student community fostered at Launch School. Those who commit to the Launch School path will find themselves surrounded by dedicated and encouraging fellow students and staff who will then comprise a strong network of top-notch Software Engineers.

Melissa Manousos

I continue to be impressed by the Launch School staff and their professionalism. The assessments are, I think, one of the best parts of this program.

Severin Perez

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

Steve Kolock

New York

I understand the topics that I've learned about much more deeply than I could have hoped, but I think the biggest improvement has been in my ability to quickly understand new material (or theoretical situations, or network problems, etc.) that I haven't encountered before given the strong foundation laid in the courses so far.

Anne Jones

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.

Ryan Schaul

Due to personal reasons, I ended up taking a decent amount of time off from LaunchSchool. Despite this time off, I was surprised at the amount of information I still retained, and jumping back into the course was a lot more fluid than I'd expected. This was very reassuring and a testament that the "slow path to proficiency" and mastering the fundamentals was working just as intended.

Dylan Jones

Courses 101-130 are just absolutely fantastic introductions to programming. Doing the Peer-Led C seminar stuff made me realize just how much I had learned in those courses and how it would be applicable across different languages as I see smatterings of them here and there across the web.

Jordan Whistler

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

Letladi Sebesho

Johannesburg, South Africa

I joined Launch School specifically for its promise of feedback. The program has far exceeded my expectations in that regard.

Ben Zelinski

I now have complete confidence that given enough time and effort, I could solve any engineering problem and build up any product that I want.

Andy Jakubowski

I often thought about making a career change into software development, but it wasn’t until I found Launch School that I felt confident that I could make that ambition a reality.

Walid Wahed

New York City

Launch School has changed me in so many ways. I have more focus and discipline now, more attention to detail, more determination than I ever had before.

Jenae Janzen

If you cannot do Capstone for whatever reasons, let me assure you that the Core Curriculum is more than enough to prepare you for a successful entry into the software engineering world.

Markus Unger

I am finding myself less and less afraid of new technologies that I don't understand, the curriculum so far has given me a framework for understanding/deconstructing the underlying problem first.

Daniel Cosme

The step by step, slow progression in this course is excellent. The student is able to focus in on one problem at a time. Overall pleased with the presentation of the course - the assignments were difficult enough to stretch my abilities but not overwhelm or confuse.

Alex Soloviev

I thought I knew Ruby well after completing Code Academy’s Ruby track and solving algorithms online. Joining Launch School helped me shatter that misconception. Learning the fundamentals bottom-up through Launch School helped me gain clarity and filled the gaps in my knowledge about Ruby and programming in general.

Krunal Patel

The problem-solving approaches we've learned at Launch School have been the most valuable to my current career (lead product designer). PEDAC, CRC cards, and ERD's have helped shape how I design products and then explain and translate them to the engineers I work with.

Nabil Kazerouni

Within two weeks of sending out my first application, I was getting contacted so often that I had to start turning away opportunities for interviews. I had the freedom to choose where I would work and I ended up accepting an incredible offer for a Software Engineer II position from a tech startup in Manhattan.

Tannr Allard

The focus on fundamentals has been invaluable. That is the kind of learning experience that I need and that I really believe is the right way. Having gone through this program, I don't have the answer to every programming question, but I have confidence that there is little in the field that I will not be able to seriously engage with.

Nathan Classen

The community is great and Launch School has taken care of facilitating interactions between students (e.g., Slack channels, forums, study groups, posting students' solutions to exercises, tech and talks).

Catherine Emond

In school, I frequently benefit from the logical thought process required for programming, which helps me to break large problems into digestible pieces. Before starting the Launch School curriculum, being faced with a problem would usually result in my head spinning as I tried to load a problem into my head, but I now am able to use an iteration of the PEDAC process to work it out more efficiently.

Tyler

It's been really exciting and meaningful and it's generally just helped me find happiness knowing that I can put in thousands of hours and learn so much.

Austin Miller

Having gone through the courses so far, I can pick up a programming book or stumble across any documentation have the knowledge base to quickly understand what I'm reading. I am able to think about a problem or look at an application and be able to think about the kind of data that may be at play or think through requirements and implementation possibilities--which I find incredibly exciting!

Y Choi

I have not once regretted my decision to join Launch School and its Capstone program

Vincent DeVendra

Boston, MA, USA

Though I was skeptical at first, trusting the process and basing my knowledge on problem-solving and fundamental skills has paid dividends. The problem-solving skills I picked up while attending Launch School have made me not only a more competent web developer but also a more competent person.

Gino Bonanno

After completing the back-end portion of the core curriculum, I spent about 2 months building a camp schedule management system to auto-generate daily schedules for camps. I felt confident in the skills and knowledge I gained from Launch School that when there was a problem to fix or a need for a creative approach to improve the application, the question wasn't whether I could find a solution, but rather how long it would take and whether it is worth it.

Eitan Bar-David

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

Jevon Hayter

Learning the fundamentals has given me so much joy, it's hard to put to words. It is learning a new language and finally understanding. It's as if a veil has been lifted and I have been let in to a whole new world.

Will Yennie

I think a big takeaway for me is simply that I am able to build a program. A lot of folk out there who go to various bootcamps or are self-taught, struggle with moving beyond the tutorials. The way the program is structured forces you to move past that point, which I appreciate.

Melinda Zwanziger

If I had the knowledge I've gained from Launch School in my previous jobs, I would have had a lot more confidence and felt more comfortable - especially when tricky situations arose and my employers were looking to me for clarity and advice.

Mat Sachs

I'm quite surprised how much I've learned in such a short amount of time. To teach myself how to use the tools shown in this course would take me years of headaches and stress. I have attempted many courses, both paid and free, and Launch School is one of those that I feel have truly tried to teach, and be understood.

Josh Crane

The flexibility of setting my own schedule has allowed me to stick with it, and something I really appreciate. Balancing my learning with life's other demands has been manageable, while still feeling like I've made ample progress in learning fundamentals. The structure of Launch School has allowed for that.

Katherine Beck

I believe the high standard set by all at Launch School is very much starting to bleed into other aspects of my life. I am realising how much there is to learn and challenging myself to rise to the highest level I can. It is a very encouraging pedagogy once it starts working for you. I wish I had encountered such a way of learning earlier on in my education.

Nick Stebbings

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

Chris Theodoridis

It could be incredibly difficult and overwhelming at times, particularly for someone with no prior programming experience, but the way the material is taught and the requirement of mastery completely changed the way I learn in general. Once you progress into the program a bit, you really realize that you can learn just about anything.

Samantha Lipari

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

Alex Dzwonchyk

I commend the program itself, but particularly the TAs that provide the honest, constructive, helpful feedback that not only helps me grow as a programmer but helps me know that I'm growing.

Ben Zelinski

If I had had courses like the ones I took in Launch School when I took programming in high school (back when I was originally interested in it), instead of the drab confusing courses I had, I think my life might have taken a vastly different turn.

Jordan Whistler

The fact of the matter is that I simply would not have been provided the top quality job opportunity that I ultimately accepted if it wasn’t for the process that we followed and the mentoring that we were given.

Perry Carbone

New York, NY, USA

Before Launch School, I was only able to follow tutorials or how-to and get something done on an ad hoc basis without fully understanding the mechanisms and principles to productively transfer the learning to other projects. Having gone through the core curriculum, I am now able to break down large specs into smaller problems and think through an approach.

Yoorhim Choi

I originally came to LS from a Master's program at a university with a decent reputation in CS, because after a few classes I felt like I hadn't really learned anything. I couldn't problem solve very well, and looking at new code felt like I was trying to translate ancient Egyptian, even though I had "learned" enough to pass the class with flying colors. Thanks to the LS approach, I feel much more equipped solving problems strategically instead of hack-and-slashing my way through

Kyle Ledoux

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

Daniel Schonfeld

Los Angeles, California, USA

I've never encountered a program like this before and so far it seems quite effective and has the necessary documentation, support, and infrastructure to set students up for success.

Armando Mota

Overall I am confident in my ability to pick up any new technology as I know how to use Documentation effectively and have mastered the fundamentals. I am confident that with some more hard work and focus, I will be able to find a job. Most of all I am sure that I will be able to be a productive developer rather than constantly having to ask for help about basic things.

Eamon O Callaghan

I feel like I've learned a ton, and overall I'm very confident in my ability, seeing that a year ago I had literally 0 knowledge of programming and I'm also coming from a humanistic studies background.

Radu Adrian Constantin

Anyone who aspires to push themselves to be the best that they can be should consider Capstone. Capstone really is a fantastic career-launching step.

Josh Nelson

Learning the fundamentals has been pretty eye opening. I work in my day job as a Java developer. Understanding the fundamentals has helped with everything. I understand that computer languages all do pretty much the same thing but it is just how they implement them.

Tim Brice

Going from knowing absolutely nothing about coding, programming, networking or databases to confidently solving problems, building small programs, working with others and understanding a lot more about technologies I use every day has been absolutely mind-blowing.

Jenae Janzen

Launch School's pedagogy was already starting to pay massive dividends earlier in the curriculum, but this final Core course has been a gold mine of realized competence.

Timothy Cummings

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

Jamie Wen

The amount of knowledge I have absorbed while working through the curriculum thus far is impressive and launch school presented it in a way that was never overwhelming or intimidating.

Kal Krueger

After completing the back-end portion of the core curriculum, I built an application to assist with a painfully manual payroll process. This saves several hours per week of some of our busiest and most highly paid team members while significantly reducing payroll errors.

Timothy Cummings

Shortly after finishing the backend portion of the core curriculum, I received an interview for a developer position. Surprisingly, a huge chunk of related questions came up in my interview and I received an offer about a week later.

Justin Zeng

I'm very grateful for Launch School, and in particular the fact that Launch School has forced me to slow down and actually learn things, as opposed to looking for the quick fix.

Duncan Britt

I don't think I can oversell how important learning fundamentals has been for me. Not only did it basically shift my entire view of learning in all venues, but it made me realize that any learning goal is attainable with the right outlook, planning, and dedicated practice.

Kyle Ledoux

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

Sheng Yeong

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

After completing only the backend part of the core curriculum, I was offered a Rails testing job, but I turned that down and have since stopped applying for jobs. It was really gratifying to know that after what seems like such a short time, I'm already in a place where I can feel okay turning down a job.

Austin Miller

While the curriculum was amazing, I don't think I'd have progressed as much as I have if I didn't have to prepare for each assessment. I learned something from every single one and I'm so grateful to the LS staff for their feedback. They're the secret sauce.

Ric Gonzalez

I began work on a web app for locating Messier objects (deep sky objects like galaxies, nebulas, etc.) during RB175. The foundations that I built during that course gave me the ability to read documentation and figure out how to do things that weren't covered explicitly in the curriculum.

Joshua Leath

The care the curriculum is engineered with, the time the staff invests in making sure students master the material, and the results that this world-class program gives are the main reasons why I can say with confidence that Launch School is the best learning experience anyone willing to walk on the path of mastery could ever have.

Juan Palma

I recently helped my employer with some custom JavaScript. The project made me realize that I have become not just a capable software developer, but a high quality developer that writes high quality code.

Drew Holbrook

When I started Launch School I had virtually no experience coding. Now, I feel like the Core Curriculum has given me years of coding experience.

Drew Holbrook

Working through these final exercises has felt more like a victory parade than work. To successfully utilize concepts and APIs in minutes or hours, when I could previously spend a week or more with no success, is a wonderful feeling. Thank you!

Timothy Cummings

This has been the most enjoyable learning experience I've had in a long time. I am loving the slow build up and foundations that are being built, and I can feel myself getting smarter and also significantly more confident in what I know at the same time.

Reilly Knutson

The professionalism of the community, both in the forums and on Slack, is second to none. I'm amazed how LS has managed to attract so many hardworking, inquisitive, and good-natured people to it's program. I plan on being active in Slack for the foreseeable future (when I'm not buried in Capstone work).

Nick Miller

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.

Alex Henegar

I tried many times to learn how to program throughout the last 6 years or so. This is the one that worked — I didn't get close with the others. In retrospect, everything was noise until I got here.

Jose Agustin

I eventually landed an offer with DigitialOcean - which is beyond my imagination!

Ying Chyi Gooi

Denver

It's hard to overstate the importance of strong fundamentals, and looking back at the last year, it's apparent how well Launch School's pedagogic approach works. Just three months ago I have written the by far largest program I've ever done, and did so with confidence and ease. That amazing transformation is testament to the quality of the core curriculum so far.

Markus Unger

It has been rewarding to begin to experience JIT learning as I'm more confident skimming rapidly through documentation and absorbing and implementing various tools and APIs and understanding them. I really believe Launch School is as effective as people say it is.

Justin Brereton

Wow! I've already learned so much (and yet so little!) and just love how the course is structured in small, circular steps. I also love how I can tell I'm improving.

Nick Rowlands

Learning fundamentals and practicing lots of problem solving has really changed the way I think. Both inside and outside of programming, my thought process is much more structured now.

Stephanie Cunnane

Launch School helped me switch careers and changed my life! After spending 1 year and 7 months going through the Core and Capstone program, I am now making more than 3 times my previous salary while working completely from home with tons of flexibility.

Adam Peterson

I completed an entire bachelors degree in Computer Science, two years of which I was also here at Launch School, and though I enjoyed school and did get a lot out of going to university, it was my efforts here at LS that are the pillars I feel I can build off of as I begin my engineering career.

Sheila Babadi

I find that if I don't understand code at first, I can draw on my ingrained understanding of the fundamentals to logic my way to a solution. This I couldn't do before.

Peter D'Elia

Launch School has given me a whole new way to look at learning and mastery that goes far beyond code. My day job is working as a marketer and I learned everything I know through books, podcasts, blogs, and courses. Going back I would have done everything differently, asking questions like "What are the things that won't change?" and "What are the fundamental skills of a marketer that go across roles?".

Shane Rostad

I had a pretty striking moment recently where it sort of hit me all at once how much I've learned and how much confidence and procedural knowledge I've built in the fundamentals; it made me see that I can do much more than I realized, and this from having just touched the surface of a different path.

Isaak

I have gained skills beyond what I could have imagined when I was younger after somehow I internalized the message that math, science, and technology were not for me. Launch School has helped me erase that message, plot a new path for my life, and then given me the tools to walk that path.

Ginni Pinckert

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.

Armando Mota

Overall, I thought the Core program was great! My confidence has gone up a lot since starting Core. I remember trying to read the documentation for Python and a few libraries and frameworks prior to Core and getting completely overwhelmed, but now I look at documentation and it's significantly more manageable.

Adam Trotta

The fundamentals approach and how to problem-solve is something I feel has been applicable in other fields as well. I'm feeling much more confident as I approach any issue, as I'll sit down and in pseudo-code like manner break it down sequentially into smaller tasks in order to get the job done. So I feel I've experienced the veracity of the Steve Jobs quote about how everybody should learn to program because it teaches you how to think.

William Parker Jackson

From the perspective of someone who didn't know anything about programming before Launch School, my confidence to learn any new language, technology or topic has soared in a way I didn't think was possible in such a short time.

Juan Palma

The sheer difficulty of the courses has forced me to learn how to learn. My main weaknesses include reading comprehension & focus. With MBL, I was forced to face these. For the last six months, I have noticed a drastic increase in my comprehension and focus.

Jason Aricheta

The most beneficial aspect has been having access to others in the community who are equally motivated and willing to teach and learn.

Mia Jimenez

I believe that the Capstone program gave me the rare opportunity to get serious mentorship and team experience that would have taken years to receive on the job.

Jacob Coker-Dukowitz

What you guys have built here is something truly special, and I am so grateful to have been able to devote the past 10 months to this amazing program. I will never be able to repay you all for what you’ve done for me. You’ve armed me with the not only the tools necessary to thrive in such a competitive field, but in life.

Gabriel De Almeida

I decided to enroll in Capstone because I wanted to take on a larger engineering project. I ended up getting a job as an SDE II with a great salary and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Launch School to anyone interested in software development as a career. It has been truly life changing.

Dorey Miller

I can say with confidence that there is simply no better way to launch a career in software engineering than with Launch School

Tyler Guillen

From the first glance, it was apparent that Launch School had been founded by industry veterans. I have never encountered a curriculum more in-depth and rigorous

Sunny Beatteay

New York City

The core curriculum provides a solid platform and jumping off point to go learn almost anything you could want to in programming

Max Appleton

Building up from nothing has been quite the eye-opening experience. Now when I encounter a something challenging or something I want to learn, I know it's going to be a process that will take varying degrees of time and a lot of repetition for competent levels of comprehension.

Stephen Johnston

It's through Launch School's high expectations of its students, its comprehensive resources and its supportive community that I've been able to achieve what I have so far.

Richard Morris

The thing that I will take with me from Launch School is that I can start writing an application from nothing and produce something that looks great and works well with no help. I can take an idea from my head and make it a reality. That's so much more than I ever thought I would be able to do.

Jon Ginder

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

Robin Paul

Austin, Texas, USA

I feel really proud of how much progress I've made by this point and this just feels like the beginning.

Laura Davies

The more that I learn, the more I realize how much more there is to learn, but what Launch School has taught me so far is to become a learner. I learnt to not only strive to know information and programming languages but to focus on the fundamentals, truly understand how things work and always seek to learn new things.

Jacob Resnick

What I appreciate about Launch School is the way it instills and cultures dedication to the craft it teaches. From its philosophy, to the tough assessments, constantly evolving curriculum, solid material, and fantastic staff, I think Launch School has a great model and I hope it continues to help programmers progress through the "plateau".

Jocie Moore

Was it all worth it in the end? Without a doubt, my answer is a resounding yes! After 10 weeks on the job hunt, I accepted an offer for a position where I’ll be making more than $100k/year.

Tiffany Han

San Francisco Bay Area

The world needs more Launch Schools, not just because of the best-in-class content and staff, but because of the culture the program espouses and the type of community it attracts.

Jay de la Torre

I was given a lead position and a team for a major, logistically complex project our company received, despite not having experience in the domain itself. The first two weeks of the project were me wrangling everyone together for both explicit and implicit PEDAC sessions. Due to the discovery, planning and attitude-setting that came from those sessions our project came in under-time, on-budget, and with great praise from our client (the federal government).

Alexander Drover

The Core curriculum was amazing. It really delivered on its promise on mastering the fundamentals.

Julia Martin

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

Adrian Carroll

Learning the fundamentals is like proving to myself that it is possible to learn anything else I want in the future.

Jordan Eggers

I am very relieved and grateful that I chose to put my trust in Launch School. The quality of the curriculum and course materials are outstanding. The staff are professional, knowledgeable, patient and support is always provided in a timely manner.

Laura Davies

Personally, the greatest result for me has been solidifying my learning process. It truly gives you a sense of empowerment and the feeling that with enough time you can learn anything -- quite magical really.

Marcus Sinkinson

I love going at my own pace. With no formal deadlines to rely on, I have developed discipline in my study habits which has led to more discipline in other parts of my life as well.

Cody Williams

I feel like one of the brilliant things about Launch School is the just-right approach to the material--it would be easy to not learn enough or to spend too much time on things that aren't necessary.

Liela Rotschy

Honestly, I really enjoyed the Ruby programming and back-end development courses. I have been taking some courses concurrently on Python and Django and have been shocked by the efficacy of the mastery based approach (digging into the docs to figure out the root of a problem vs hacking out a solution by trying multiple approaches without systematically solving for why there was an issue).

James Henderson

I began helping on a $50,000 project built in the Symfony PHP framework, and within a month became the lead dev on the project. This was my first time using an MVC, Symfony is quite complex, and PHP is very strange, but I was able to be effective very quickly because I knew what was going on under the hood. My knowledge of fundamentals meant I never felt really lost. From this work, I was given a 20% raise and similar roles in other projects.

Ian Evans

I have gained better insight by asking the right questions and seeing the bigger picture when troubleshooting. Solving problems has been much more manageable since I am able to think about breaking them down and taking time to research rather than trying to brute force come up with answers.

Vince Bundage

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.

Calvin Conley

I was able to get a new job, shifting from education to tech, after the first few courses in the core curriculum; my new employers complimented my ability to learn on-the-go and problem solve. I credit Launch School with helping me build those skills to the point where I could finally make the jump out of my old job that I had been thinking about for so long!

Kyle Ledoux

By having a solid set of fundamental tools, I can now go out and explore, learn new languages, cutting edge frameworks and understand them from the ground up vs just being taught and not really being able to go out on my own.

Nigel Hing

I've become a more disciplined, methodical, dedicated, deliberate person with my health, finances, personal development, everything! These are things I picked up, not just through the curriculum itself, but through the culture of the community here. I'll forever be thankful you guys exist.

Sheila Babadi

I would say the biggest take away from Launch school is that it really helped me learn how to learn, I was kinda stubborn at first starting out and I've noticed that my temperament while coding has gone from frustration when something that doesn't work out to curiosity. Launch School taught me a very valuable lesson in that temperament which I've applied outside of programing and work.

Reilynn Olsen

I never thought I’d be making 6 figures in my twenties but I just landed my number 1 choice company and in a mid-level Software Engineering role just two weeks after completing Capstone.

Steven Shen

Going through LS taught me how to structure my learning and how important mastering basic concepts is before moving on. This was an extremely important realization since I graduated with a degree in engineering, and I was not able to figure that out after 5 years of college.

Raul Romero Cano

Over the last 10 months I have developed both a robust set of foundational skills and a deep confidence in my ability to apply the learning framework taught at Launch School to improve all aspects of my life.

Will Lotherington

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.

Juan Palma

Bharat Agarwal

I'm confident that given a project to do and with enough time I can do my own research and create an application from start to finish. The overall picture of designing and working on a project has now been demystified for me. I'm really looking forward to continue with the front-end course.

Radu Adrian Constantin

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

Conrad Beach

Launch School has successfully removed the veil from what was once magic to me. I now fundamentally understand concepts and abstractions I never knew existed in the first place. I’m able to look at code from other languages not covered in the curriculum and understand what is going on.

Gabriel De Almeida

I've discovered I'm actually getting better at my current job (not related to programming). Usually when I was assigned a task to do I would just jump right in and start working (and made plenty of mistakes), now I apply a process inspired by PEDAC and then proceed to calmly and slowly work on the task. I'm way better at what I do now.

Radu Adrian Constantin

At first, I was a bit disappointed to be learning only the basics, but as I progressed I learned so much more than I was expecting to. Now that I've mastered the fundamentals, and even before completing this program, my confidence in my abilities has absolutely skyrocketed.

Angel Ruiz-Bates

The algorithms I was having trouble solving on Codewars have now become much easier to solve with my new knowledge of Ruby variable scoping rules, methods, and general problem solving approach.

Krunal Patel

Academically, this has been one of the most rewarding, and demanding, learning experiences of my life. Yet, I feel like I've achieved much more than I ever thought I was capable of before starting out. I look forward to seeing what the future brings.

Richard Morris

Thinking of solving problems as a process rather than a hack/slash type of activity has been very helpful for me. In the past, I've always been able to come up with a solution to a problem eventually, but trusting the process has made it much more efficient and I think has prepared me to solve more difficult problems in the future.

William Baker

Launch School really is in a class of its own in terms of education paradigms. The Mastery Based Learning philosophy does not compromise on depth of learning and does not accept a bell curve of results - it is indescribably rare in our profit & growth focused world.

Will Lotherington

I have found that in my work as a frontend developer, my ability to learn other frameworks and just intuitively know how things are working have increased exponentially.

Steven Alston

How I wish I'd learnt about Launch School 10 years ago. The fact that we had to read three books on Ruby, just in prep, and then went so deep into the thing itself in the core curriculum, that was really instructive.

Bharat Agarwal

Experts always return to fundamentals because they are the foundation on which everything else is built. Launch School’s core program embodies this principle by emphasizing mastery of fundamentals through purposeful individual study.

Sienna Wood

Denver

Launch School has helped me change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. It has totally reoriented how I approach learning and has given me joy and passion in learning concepts to depth.

Zac Klammer

This whole curriculum has helped me reshape how I think about learning. I am so happy that I found this program.

Chris Durand

I will forever love this curriculum and recommend it to anyone wanting to become a developer.

Andrew Crotwell

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

Eduardo Poleo

Toronto, Canada

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

Dito Hartoto

Melbourne, Australia

Although there are many factors that go into raises and promotions, I fully believe that the approach to problem solving and personal development ingrained at Launch School played a major role in my last promotion and ~25% raise.

Will Lotherington

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

Gus Pares

Miami Beach, FL, USA

The Mastery-Based Learning style and all of the repetition has been huge for me. It's given me a new sense of confidence in my ability to learn and how to accomplish learning.

Stephen Johnston

I feel like Launch School has helped me cultivate a 'killer instinct' for problem solving.

Josh Hinman

I work at a little consultancy, which among other things, does a lot of work with school and education systems here in Australia. I've learned a lot from the programs pedagogical approach and curriculum design. We often use Launch School as example in discussions around getting the fundamentals right.

David Perich

Learning fundamentals has had an immense and positive impact. Traditional academics was a bit of a letdown for me, for a number of reasons, and as someone whose highest core values include lifelong learning, I've always been insecure about that. Launch School has changed my perspective entirely. I am more confident in myself, more fulfilled in my daily life, and more disciplined in the pursuit of my goals.

Ginni Pinckert

I have recommended and will continue to recommend Launch School to anyone wanting to learn to code.

Larson Laidlaw

Before I started the prep course, the only coding experience I had was a community college course in HTML and CSS. I have learned so much. At the end of course 175 I built the beginnings of a web app for my partner's research project to display survey data to workshop participants. I found a gem to embed R code to produce simple data visualizations. Now I can go back and refactor for a database.

Liela Rotschy

I remember reading about Launch School's learning pedagogy a long time ago and it really resonated with me. At university, I study to pass the exams but in many cases I don't understand why most things are the way they are. In here everything build on top of something else so it is pleasing to understand where everything comes from.

Juan Garcia Moreno

I got a job at a startup as a back-end engineer when I was midway through the back-end course of RB130, and also got an offer with a fast growing company at the same time. I think having the depth of understanding in writing code was extremely helpful as it made learning about algorithms and more much easier.

Edmond Tam

Had it not been for Launch School and Capstone, I would still be working a dead-end job with no real ambitions. Now that I am on the hiring side, I would not hesitate to hire Capstone graduates from Launch School, especially from personal experience that Capstone is the real deal.

Timmy Lee

I thought I knew how to approach problem solving until I encountered PEDAC in the material. It really helped me understand the need to slow down, think through a problem, probe its boundaries, and develop a solution all before starting to code. This, out of everything, will be one of my key tools I take with me and use in my career.

Nick Miller

Being afforded the time to study without having deadlines get in the way has been a game changer for me. But learning the fundamentals has been the eye opener. It simply works.

Alfonso González

Learning fundamentals also taught me humility — some things need a lot of effort for a long time, and there are no shortcuts.

Andy Jakubowski

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

Jeffrey Knox

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

The focus on fundamentals and problem solving has made me realize that learning to build things with code is really just another way of saying "learning how to think effectively and with clarity", and that is something I've seen extend in my life far beyond just programming skills since I've been here at LS.

Sheila Babadi

I've built a lot of confidence in my ability to pick up new programming concepts or frameworks as I encounter them. Launch School's requirements for a solid knowledge of the fundamentals via the assessments leaves me with the feeling that if I can succeed at Launch School, I will be able to pick up other frameworks/concepts as needed without much trouble.

Elizabeth Tackett

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

Charlie Reese

I did a project on the side while I was going through the curriculum. The project was in elixir and used Phoenix as a framework, and as I was trying to learn those tools, I found that the Launch School's approach of teaching fundamentals was essential because it gave me tools to approach the challenge at hand and succeed at it.

Natalia Baeza

It feels like a previously unused portion of my brain has been activated. Now, any time I'm confronted with a challenge, I tackle it head on.

Jenae Janzen

I am happy, I am grateful, and I am lucky to have found such a life-changing, unique and priceless school. Thank you, Launch School!

Juan Palma

Thanks to Launch School's guidance, philosophy, curriculum and Capstone Program, I am now a Software Engineer working a job in NYC and earning well over $100k/year

Antoine LeClercq

I'm just really excited to explore whats next for me with a strong set of fundamentals rather than messing around with sub par understanding. I'm so glad I found Launch School where I felt my 1.8 years of learning was an investment in myself.

Nigel Hing

The thing that has helped me the most is the environment that Launch School provides. A group of motivated learners whose goal is to learn how to become software developers. It motivated me even more to learn things properly.

Carl Jerritt Aquino

With the skills that I have learnt so far, I felt comfortable enough to start working on many of my own projects. I have a strong enough foundation to be able to start any small project or at least learn the necessary skills to work on any project.

Jacob Resnick

One thrilling aspect of the program is that the work ethic has bled into other aspects of my life. I have an interest in learning jazz guitar and piano and also Sanskrit language and I feel more confident now in those endeavors. I feel I have a stronger self-directed work and study ethic.

Justin Brereton

One unexpected benefit I've seen while learning fundamentals here is how much more confident I feel in my ability to learn anything, even outside of Launch School. The slow, methodical, and patient approach has really been such a benefit to me in transitioning out of a mindset that was self-defeating at times; that if I couldn't understand something in X amount of time, it wasn't for me and I needed to drop it.

Kevin Counihan

Looking back, I realize Launch School has been the transformative experience I hoped it would. What I didn't realize is that reaching this finish line would teach me so much more about myself than it did about software.

Graham Robertson

I have been programming with various programming languages for close to a decade and I have never felt more comfortable with the fundamentals. I feel like working through the back-end portion of the core curriculum has filled all the knowledge holes left behind by my self-education.

Joshua Leath

I feel that going through the core curriculum has been very transformative for me. One thing I've noticed is that when faced with learning something complicated, new, and difficult, I get this sensation of, "Ah yes, I've been here before.". So many times throughout this journey I've come across something that is at first confusing and opaque, and come out the other side with clarity and understanding. It's given me an overwhelming sense of confidence that I can learn new things even if they seem very difficult and complicated at first.

Duncan Britt

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.

Julius Zerwick

I feel like thanks to how the course is structured, mastery-based learning wasn't some shift on my end - the program is just immersive enough that it becomes a pursuit in and of itself rather than a means to an end.

Daniel Rote

What worked well was how thorough LS was with programming fundamentals. It's unique from every other thing I've tried in the past, which felt very superficial.

Linus Phan

The thoroughness and difficulty level of the assessments were perfect. They forced me to learn concepts to a high degree, but weren't so impossible that they drove me away. I really thought the tests were well done and are key to making Launch School work.

Natalie Martos

After completing the back-end portion of the core curriculum, I was able to develop such a clear and precise understanding of its topics that I found myself teaching some of these concepts to family and friends who were beginning to feel lost in their own computer science courses.

Rick Mole

Launch School's staff and curriculum are top notch.

Timothy Cummings

More than anything, the core curriculum has given me confidence in myself as a developer. I feel well equipped in my knowledge of the fundamentals and ready to keep learning. I feel proud of myself for completing it, and that's in large part due to the structure of the program and the way it was designed.

Arthur Kauffman

My thinking and understanding have changed so dramatically that I feel like a different person, not just in terms of programming skills, but in terms of the way I approach my life. I take better care of myself, I think more clearly, I'm more thoughtful and patient.

Isaak

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

Hsuancheng Chen

It was here at Launch School where I learned the importance of looking at the problem, understanding exactly what should be done first, thinking about edge cases, test cases, and the steps that should be taken to solve problems. Then, with a clear understanding, start coding.

Douglas Carvalho

Thank you so much for making this program and for making it accessible to anyone who's willing to put in a lot of time and effort.

Austin Miller

I truly feel like an engineer now and I have no doubt I'll be able to land an awesome job.

Angel Ruiz-Bates

The problem solving pedagogy equipped me with the tools necessary to tackle problems without feeling “stuck”.

Kris Denert

Another part that worked well is the calibration of the exams. I found that they tested my knowledge and stretched my thinking, but not to such an extent that I wasn't able to find the answer.

Peter D'Elia

The courses have been incredibly thorough and engaging and I can't speak highly enough of it. I tell all of my family and friends about it.

Reilly Knutson

There are plenty of holes in my knowledge still, but I am confident now that those are the types of holes that can be filled in with continued experience and practice, and not the kind of holes that involve fundamentals, where I really wouldn't know what I was doing.

Andrew Jones

After a few weeks into JS101 I felt comfortable enough accept an offer to work part time in a Unity team programming a few key aspects of a VR experience. Despite it being written in C#, the fundamentals and problem solving focus of the early LS courses came in very handy.

Marc Hermann

I've been inspired by the Database course to implement a database in MS Access (I can't install Linux or WSL at work) to improve the way we store and access information. Before, at work we've been using Excel tables which were not ideal for the situation. I've gotten a lot of praise for my initiative and my results.

Radu Adrian Constantin

Within 10 weeks of my first application, I had accepted a large salary and a small bonus at a company whose mission I was genuinely excited about.

Elise Olivares

San Francisco

Raul Romero Cano

This program has changed my life. In the past when I would think back on my college years, I always thought, "I could have done better". I think this is a common sentiment, but I have since changed my mind. I don't think the problem was with me but with the system in which I learned.

Zac Klammer

The most important result I've achieved with Launch School is the ability to understand when I've covered a new topic with enough depth to successfully apply the knowledge on the job.

Derick Gross

The Launch School experience has completely changed how I view my own potential and abilities, and how I view learning. I'm excited to apply the mastery approach, along with the techniques and methods I've now found work well for me, to many more fields over the rest of my life.

Alex Dzwonchyk

When I started I had zero experience in programming and also no technical background. Besides that, I have never studied at a level like this. I did not expect the results that I have achieved. Launch School gave me much more trust in myself.

Mark-Dames

Mastery-based learning has legitimately changed my life. Prior to coming to Launch School, I had this idea that I was only meant to do things I was immediately good at. I felt like if I struggled, or it didn't come naturally it meant I wasn't good at it. What I have learned through mastery-based learning and taking my time to learn fundamentals is that is not true. Being natural at something is helpful, but not necessary.

Kimberly Ramirez

I got a web development job I'd be incapable of doing without the fundamentals I learned with Launch School.

Timothy Cummings

Launch School taught me how to work hard for prolonged periods of time without any immediate reward. The long term benefits of that cannot be overstated.

Andy Jakubowski

I had a project I was working on before I decided to do Launch School where I was building an API in Rails using a gem. I had no idea what was going on underneath the gem, and it was impossible for me improve to the speed of the application. Now, I feel confident I could build the entire API using Ruby, Sinatra, and SQL, which would allow me to make significant speed improvements.

Larson Laidlaw

The fundamentals learned at Launch School has given me the confidence to pursue a career I previously considered out of reach. I now enjoy problem solving and have a renewed spark in bettering my craft in all facets of my life. It has been an experience I will be forever grateful for.

Vince Bundage

Prior to Launch School, I had probably watched thousands of hours worth of tutorials and had actually worked professionally in web development for years, without having the clarity I do now. Launch School is definitely doing things the right way.

Steven Alston

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

Arjun Rajkumar

Bengaluru, India

It was fun being able to put the front end concepts together to do cool, interactive things. Really find that all the foundation building we go through before is necessary and it pays off.

Josh Nelson

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. After finishing Capstone, I secured a job as a Senior Software Engineer within six weeks.

Andrew Jones

Launch School promised a strong, deep understanding of programming fundamentals, and it absolutely delivered. That deep understanding brings a lot of confidence along with the practical skills themselves. Thanks!

Ben Zelinski

Beyond the instructional quality, Launch School has an incredible culture. The leadership there have done an fantastic job of creating an environment where relationship building and mutual learning is easy and enjoyable despite having a globally distributed student body.

Luke Tuttle

I got a new job right after I completed the back-end part of the course. During the tech challenge process, I was able to build an React application and Node/Express application showcasing that I can pitch how easy to use the company's API to develop something. They were quite pleased to see I have capabilities and understanding on the web development.

Heejae Chang

The way Launch School has created courses and used the course assessments to push for mastery level learning has been a real help. I absolutely feel like I have a full and deep understanding of the JS language and the concepts that can really transfer to a lot of other programming languages now.

Justin Gustafson

When I started back in December 2019 I could only write some awfully entangled and impossible to understand VBA scripts for Excel. Today, my code is clean, well-structured and I can tackle complex problems and build applications from scratch by breaking down is simpler parts. Not only I've achieved a level of confidence and fluidity in JavaScript that I couldn't even imagine when I started Core but also I feel I leave Core with a very good foundation in programming fundamentals.

Raul De Hevia

After completing the back-end portion of the core curriculum, a friend asked me to help with issues she was having with her Wordpress site. I'd never worked with WP before but it didn't feel out of reach after some time learning the fundamentals.

Juliette Sinibardy

Launch School has easily been the most life-changing educational experience of my life.

Jay de la Torre

At the halfway point, I have noticed improvement in my ability to not only program, but to problem solve. I used to not be able to get a hold of a larger problem- now I can break them down into smaller more manageable pieces, solve them, and then put them together to solve the problem as a whole.

Chris Clifton

I used to record Excel macros on the side at work, just to make my job a bit easier. After learning the fundamentals, I was able to really dig into how VBA code works and optimize my code. I built several other tools in use by other peers at my company, which eventually got me a promotion to a Specialist role.

Juan Juy

Following the example of some other students who had got jobs after Core without doing Capstone, 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.

Nicholas Stebbings

Learning the fundamentals with Launch School and having the opportunity to participate in the buzzing international LS community has been the best educational experience of my life

Austin Miller

One of the the greatest way the curriculum has helped me is simply to be around such lovely people from the community. Although there was a pandemic going on for the entirety of my time at Launch School, I haven't been this socially engaged for years. At a basic level, it's helped shift my view of myself to a more positive one since the people around here appreciate me.

Iuliu Pop

The thing I like most about LS is that unlike other 'similar' programs, their focus is truly on preparing students for a long term career in the industry, not on growing enrollment.

Luke Tuttle

Capstone - If I could sum it up in one phrase it’d be this: you will blow yourself away. Your foundational investment will payoff as you build something truly awesome.

Lukas Nimmo

Not only do I feel confident that I have a firm foundation of knowledge and skill to draw from as I continue to progress through the rest of the course, but a renewed sense of my own potential and possibility as a person.

Richard Morris

I have grown to be a more conscientious learner, a more capable problem solver, and a more adaptable person all-around. It sounds hackneyed to say, but working through the core-curriculum has shifted my view of myself and my capabilities, and reinforced my confidence in myself.

Kyle Ledoux

I have learned more about software engineering in my time spent at Launch School than I have anywhere else.

Ezra Ellette

Launch School's mastery based learning finally brought clarity to my technical capabilities. I'm capable of more than I ever was, and I can finally discern areas where my knowledge actually falls short versus areas that don't require mastery.

Timothy Cummings

Launch School has equipped me with not only the right understanding but with the belief in myself. If you asked me a year ago if I could ever devote over a thousand hours to anything, my answer would be a resounding no. That is no longer the case. I’m not afraid to devote my life to mastery.

Gabriel De Almeida

Completing Launch School's Core Curriculum and Capstone program was one of the best decisions I've made in my life.

Stephanie Cunnane

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!

Julius Zerwick

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

Anthony Licari

Queens, New York, USA

Whenever I take a chance on Stack Overflow to help me understand something, I'm often surprised at how little others understand at a fundamentals level, and how much people rely on resources like SO for the most basic information. I typically end up feeling like I'd rather just go to the docs. So grateful to LS for giving me the confidence to go get the information I need from the right place.

Wendy Kuhn

Going through all the assessments and challenges has given me much more confidence in my abilities and contributed significantly to my self-growth. My thanks to all the Launch School Staff!

Kris Ingva

As someone who has spent a lot of time studying complex, scientific topics at university (to PhD level) I can say that the content of the material, and the manner in which it is introduced to students, is some of the best I've seen.

Laura Davies

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.

Julius Zerwick

Post a coding Bootcamp that I attended, I found out the hard way that I really didn't know coding as much as I thought I would. Even when the concepts or a coding problem was easy enough to understand theoretically, I had a hard time translating my thoughts into code. After finding Launch School, I found that the 101 lessons and 109 assessments were just what I needed to find my confidence in coding again.

Ainaa Sakinah Azman

One thing I've gained so far is a much greater ability to read documentation. I'm comfortable enough with the documentation for the Ruby language, Sinatra, and PostgreSQL that I hardly ever had to reach out to Launch School staff to ask a question. I could usually find everything I needed on my own. This gives me confidence in my ability to figure out what I need to find as well as where to find it.

Michael Rago

I had many ideas for building web projects but didn't know where to start. After working through the fundamentals, I feel like I have built the necessary mental frameworks to build and launch those projects. What's more important is that now I know how to break down project ideas into database structure design and implementation details.

Genie Guo

As a full time teacher, the ability to study in the evenings and weekends has been massive. It's meant that I've had the autonomy to study whenever and wherever I can without needing to quit my job and leave myself financially compromised.

Richard Morris

Finding Launch School has been life changing. I got an amazing six-figure job offer that was above and beyond what I ever dreamed was possible.

Cody Stair

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

Cristian Rennella

The most useful thing about the Launch School core curriculum is preparing us to be able to learn new languages and development tools in general.

Natalia Baeza

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

Toni Cesarek

Ljubljana, Slovenia

I no longer have to think about basic concepts and can focus on design decisions as well as learning and working with higher level tools.

Drew Holbrook

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

Liam Brady

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

I finally found Launch school and it was everything and more I was looking for. A great curriculum, smart supportive people in the community, and a school that truly cares about the success of their students.

Mandy Cheang

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

Yvette Gonzalez

Chicago, Illinois, USA

It’s hard to overestimate the role Launch School’s Capstone and the Core Curriculum programs played in me getting my first full time tech job. My first full time tech job far exceeded my expectations in terms of salary and seniority level.

Daniel Rote

I love how I get detailed grading feedback on my assessments less than 24 hours after taking them.

Zach DuBow

Learning the fundamentals has already made me more flexible and adaptable to new situations. I took some time to get up to speed with PHP and then I took a tour of Laravel, and I was able to implement basic authentication and a small feature without much difficulty!

Monte Williams

Thanks to LS, I am able to take any complex topic and break it down into individual parts that I am able to analyze and learn from.

Raul Romero Cano

I am definitely more confident in my problem solving skills. I used to give up after encountering a problem that's seemingly out of my skill set, but now I feel like I can tackle much harder problems.

Carl Jerritt Aquino

Coming from an academic background I can compare both learning experiences (university vs Launch School), and I'm now a believer in the idea of mastery-based self-paced online learning. This is such a great formula, and a great fit for me. And certainly a big part of the Launch School magic comes from the honesty and care that is felt at every level.

Catherine Emond

Launch School has opened my eyes to my own possibilities.

Jenae Janzen

This is perhaps one of the most surprising things for me - there is definitely a feeling of deep care when interacting with staff and TAs. The feedback I received along the way was always thoughtful, personal and very helpful.

Catherine Emond

This is probably the first time I've studied something in this way, being very meticulous about each lower layer concept before moving up, and it really opened my eyes to how software and software engineering work in general.

Andrew Thresher

The main takeaway I have gotten from the first half of the course is the programming fundamentals which have already helped me understand Swift programming and the React framework better. I had to learn both of those for college and it was way easier because of what I learnt here.

Juan Garcia Moreno

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

Robert Jewell

New York, New York, USA

Your ultimate goal should be to get one of the top jobs out there. And trust me, the Launch School team and their curriculum are more than capable of helping you to achieve that.

Konstantin Minevskiy

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.

Tommy Caruso

Even though learning the fundamentals is a lot of hard work, it has been everything I hoped it would be and more.

Karis Tobias

I had a mountain of student loan debt that I’d taken on to get an undergraduate and then graduate degree, and knew I’d never be able to pay off. I completed the core curriculum and joined Capstone which then got me a six-figure salary as a Software Engineer within 4 weeks of starting the job hunt.

Wendy Kuhn

I spent years wanting to program and tinker with computers. Launch School gave me a solid learning path that wasn't about pushing dev's out the door.

Andrew Crotwell

By far the greatest way the curriculum has helped me is to drill patience into how I learn, how I view my career and how I live my life.

Iuliu Pop

Learning the fundamentals has helped me in a lot of ways. I am confident in my ability to both read and write code, to understand syntax at a level that most JavaScript code that I encounter doesn't have me scratching my head wondering what exactly is happening with each small detail, to trace errors and debug problems efficiently, to research and find critical information in the documentation, to fully understand a problem and then solve it systematically, to understand how different components of a project interact with each other, and the list goes on.

Ian Austin

I studied using a few online self-study programs on my own before beginning Launch School, and the understanding I have of what I am doing is night-and-day levels above where I would have been otherwise.

Andrew Jones

I've spent considerable time as a teaching professional, and as a professional I'll say that the curriculum and teaching methodology that you have designed is among the best that I've come across, if not the best.

Robert Rodes

Even after accepting a lead instructor position with a notable bootcamp, I was unsatisfied with my career trajectory. It was only once I joined Capstone that I saw the true power of "just-in-time" learning. 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.

Derick Gross

I have studied a variety of disciplines at five different universities both in person and online, I wish any of them had compared to quality of the Launch School curriculum. I mean this less as an indictment of those experiences and more as a testament to how enjoyable and effective Launch School's 'mastery based learning' philosophy can be for someone who truly wants to learn something from top to bottom, inside and out.

Luke Tuttle

I built a tool over the last few months that is ambitious in scope and has the potential to be rolled out to 1000+ people internally. Although it is not strictly a web app, I applied the PEDAC process learned at Launch School while working on this project, and I am confident that the tool will be easy to maintain, customize as needs change, and stable regardless of how many users we give access to.

Will Lotherington

The biggest takeaway I have had thus far, without a doubt, has been my problem solving competency and my trust in the Mastery Based Learning process. The way I tackle just about every facet of my life has changed dramatically.

Rick Mole

In my job hunt, which lasted exactly two weeks, there was never an interview that I walked into where I wasn't confident. This confidence and drive instilled in me by Launch School allowed me to go to multiple interviews, succeed in various interview formats, and join a company that I love as a senior engineer.

Gabriel De Almeida

The number one result I see from the back-end courses is a higher level of confidence. Before Launch School (and even early on) I would often feel like I didn't have what it takes, especially when I would think about how much more there was to learn in order to contribute something meaningful. I now have a solid, systematic approach to problem-solving that can be applied to any new challenge.

Matthew Clark

Learning fundamental has been an amazing experience for me. It has changed the way I study and think about learning. I am confident now that I can learn any programming concept or language as long as I slow down and focus on fundamentals.

Balal Naeem

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

Patrick Brennan

Leaning into the Launch School process has really helped me build on top of pre-existing knowledge, that's made me feel a lot more confident and develop a strong sense of clarity over why I am learning a particular component of the technology. Overall, it has been really helpful for me and I'm enjoying it greatly.

Elaine Vuong

I would honestly say that LS is the most challenging and rewarding academic course I've been through. I'm proud to say that I've completed the Core Curriculum.

Andrew Ratliff

Learning the fundamentals made me much more confident about learning to program. No matter how far I get in this field, I will have to thank Launch School for providing me with such good quality content that allows me to navigate through the sea of information with much more confidence.

Luiz Carlos Alves de Melo

After going through the core curriculum, I still feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of how much more there is to learn, but I know that I can learn anything I decide to as long as I commit enough time toward it. That is the biggest thing LS gave to me and I greatly appreciate it.

Matthew Clark

Learning fundamentals has really helped me in my own life. I feel like I care more deeply about why things work the way they do and have gained more patience when it comes to learning what I find interesting.

Vince Bundage

I am amazed not just at how much I've learned, but how much I retained what I learned. In college I remembered long enough to pass the test. Now I've learned enough to go into more advanced levels of the topics Launch School covers. Having this confidence I've gained in a subject that was so intimidating and confusing when I was studying by myself is priceless.

Joe Castrigno

I can confidently teach others the topics I have mastered. When I don't understand something, I dig deeper into it rather than running back to my comfort zone.

Jenae Janzen

It seems much of the programming world is built on abstractions on top of abstractions that makes our jobs easier. But you have to understand the fundamentals first or otherwise those abstractions are not going to make sense.

Tim Brice

The curriculum is thoughtful, clear, and intentional, and the staff are incredibly supportive and knowledgeable. I've found new friends in an amazing community, and I've already been in more study groups here than my entire college career.

Isaak

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

Peter Karth

Rocky Mount, NC, USA

Learning fundamentals has given me the abilities and confidence to get hired as an engineer at PayPal where I'm solving problems every day alongside smart and awesome people. The future is really bright for my career now and it's entirely thanks to my decision to start Launch School.

Alex Dzwonchyk

I've found myself able to quickly learn new abstractions and tools and start applying them to my work in very little time, all thanks to a fundamental understanding of programming, HTTP, and databases that I learned at Launch School.

Alex Dzwonchyk

The greatest result is a feeling that I know what are the important 'pieces' to build web applications and how they all relate. If I wanted to pursue software on my own, I'd probably be able to make progress if I stopped here. No other program has given me that.

Caleb Heath

I know I have only touched the tip of the iceberg - there's still so much that I have yet to learn with Launch School and in this career ahead of me; but I now have more confidence to tackle the challenges and continue this journey. Thanks Launch School!

Josephine Chan

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.

Roy Huang

After completing the back-end curriculum, I applied to one dream job, and I got it!

Liz Fedak

The openness of the community of software developers and the amount of developers that are willing to contribute simply because they love it, is not something that I expected. I did not realize how awesome software developers are, but I get it now.

Will Yennie

Launch School provides an amazing environment that promotes hard work, dedication, empathy for your learning process, and I am so thankful to have found it.

Kimberly Ramirez

For the first time in my life, I feel like I know enough about the fundamentals to learn any new thing in engineering.

Andy Jakubowski

The exercises were a goldmine of challenges that kept me coming back to get the dopamine hit of successfully solving a problem.

Arthur Kauffman

I think learning the fundamentals has totally shifted my approach to learning. Before, from years of public school in university, I approached learning with a sense of fear. The style of mastery based learning has curbed that anxiety and let me focused entirely on learning, and made me realize that learning only takes time, and patience.

Rustie Mccumber

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

Kristen Wilde