Launch School Love, Appreciation, & Results

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

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

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

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

Launch School has opened my eyes to my own possibilities.

Jenae Janzen

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

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

My team and I developed a seriously impressive Capstone project (that had multiple people ask why we weren't turning our open-source framework into a business!) and provided many opportunities to impress during job interviews.

Veronika Todd

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

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

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

It does feel like after the Launch School curriculum, I have the ability to learn anything in programming, which is a really great feeling. The programing picture is a lot clearer and the dots connect. I think the greatest gift Launch School gave was giving me the confidence to be able to learn something that initially is hard, confusing, and intimidating. Thank you

Grant Luna

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

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

Stephanie Cunnane

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

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

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

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

Angel Ruiz-Bates

I have never participated in a learning environment where it not only challenged me professionally but also emotionally. I have learned how to be a better team player, to be vulnerable in front of peers, to learn to ask for help, and admit when I am struggling. Launch School has been a transformative and life-changing experience for me, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Kimberly Ramirez

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'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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

Vincent DeVendra

Boston, MA, USA

I feel I have learned more than I would at a boot camp and feel I have really mastered the material Launch School provided. Thank you all so very much, it has been a wonderful experience and I am walking away with the tools I need to pursue a career of my choice that I will find satisfaction and meaning in, and that means the world to me.

Brendan Vonick

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

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

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

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

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

This program opened the doors for me to move out of an unfulfilling career and jump directly into a new role in software that doubled what I was making before as a Structural Engineer!

Chase Sobey

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

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

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

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

Ying Chyi Gooi

Denver

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

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 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

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

I really appreciate the way the curriculum is designed - the self-paced modules are designed in a way that introduces new material, provides ample practice opportunity, and reinforces previously learned material. As someone who has spent many years working in education I have to say I am very impressed with the way your curriculum shepherds students through such a difficult discipline.

Tony Kovatch

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

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

Excellent support at the beginning of the curiculum! It was intimidating starting at first, but the official study sessions and wealth of student articles allowed me to set expecations for assessments and get familiar with the program. I became more independent as I moved through the curicculum, but still felt supported and posted in slack/forums whenever I needed help.

Peter Hua

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 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

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

I can't overstate how much of a life lesson the concept of "mental models" (MM) is. I don't know how to explain it, but after hearing and thinking in terms of MMs I really never consider something out of reach, just maybe not within my time budget. It makes so many possible life paths feel reachable if you just wanted to spend the time to go down them, if that makes sense. "Mental model" is definitely a term that people around me are going to get used to hearing a lot.

Benjamin Boinay

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

Being able to be honest with myself and patient enough to do multiple revisions of a certain topic is a type of discipline I never had before when it came to an educational environment. I was always satisfied with "good enough". So I think learning and cultivating this skill was something that was really important for me to succeed up to this point.

Mykel Murphy

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

Just falling in love with the learning process. I can't even begin to describe the feeling of self-efficacy and confidence I've developed over the last year going through Launch School. I don't think I've mastered any skill to a level this deep before and it just feels amazing.

Mykel Murphy

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

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

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

The support experience from Launch School staff throughout the backend courses were great! I've attended a few TA led sessions during the early courses which were extremely helpful in both getting a better understanding of what to expect from assessments, and with feedback on my understanding of the material at the time.

Esther Kim

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

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

Laura Davies

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

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

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

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

Zach DuBow

Launch School is an incredible place to be. I built a few applications, got to make videos to help other students, make a lot of friends and truly grow as a human being in this field that I never thought was possible. Launch School gave me hope for a better future, that I didn't have before.

Felicia Bacon

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

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

Ben Zelinski

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

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

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

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

It's affordable. Thank you Launch School for the best education experience I've had, for the lowest cost I've had to pay.

Peter Hua

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

Anyone in my life has seen the same transition as I have worked through Core. Launch School has given me technical skills, habits for success, an amazing community, and the trust in myself to rise to new challenges moving forward. I cannot say enough about what I have gained here!

Ginni Pinckert

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

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

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

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

Jay de la Torre

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

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

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

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

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

I'm so grateful that Launch School has developed a program that can actually guide a total novice to this level of understanding - you truly have made this very difficult subject material accessible to anyone who is motivated enough to do the work.

Tony K

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 think the technique that has consistently helped me out during the back end curriculum has been the problem solving approach outlined in the PEDAC lesson. Investing generously in the planning phase has paid off every single time.

Ayme Alvarez

The biggest achievement for me from this program was gaining confidence in myself and my capabilities while also giving me a an identity. Before starting this program, I felt that my identity was lost, but this amazing program has not only given me the tools to learn the fundamentals of programming, but has also given me an identity. I am excited to see what lies ahead!

Esther Kim

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

Daniel Schonfeld

Los Angeles, California, USA

The Launch School curriculum has equipped me with numerous concepts and skills, but one lesson that particularly stands out, both for simplicity and profound impact on my learning journey - 'Love the struggle.' This phrase was shared with me on an onboarding call for RB101 by a TA and has profoundly influenced my perspective ever since. Rather than being discouraged by them, 'Love the struggle' encouraged me to view each hurdle as an integral part of my path to mastery, a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block.

Garry Ledwith

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

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

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 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

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

Launch School truly launched my software engineering career; it has been the best investment of time and money I have ever made.

Sasha Kiselev

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

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

All around, I'm just really pleased with the quality of the backend curriculum. Since working on the project, I've gained a true appreciation for how important fundamentals are. Excited to learn more in the frontend courses.

Michael Ricasa

Launch School gave me a framework for learning and understanding software that I've been able to leverage every day in my job as a software enginner. The curriculum and pedagogy are rigorous for a reason; it instills a lifelong foundation from which to build knowledge and grow as an engineer throughout your career. Launch School fundamentally changed the way I learn new skills and how I approach problems.

Jack Aitken

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

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

Having used Ruby for the first half of the course and then switching to Javascript, I feel immensely more confident in my ability to actually learn programming concepts/languages/frameworks. More than anything, I feel like Launch School has taught me how to learn programming, rather than a specific language.

Michael Jung

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

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

Julia Martin

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

Jevon Hayter

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

It seemed like there was always the right balance of instruction and practice. I would be given plenty of guidance early on, and then let loose on some practice problems on my own. Information was always presented very clearly, and exactly at the right time and in the right amount. The curriculum is extremely well polished.

Alex Sklar

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

Mastering the fundamentals of JavaScript has provided me with opportunities for the future in my pursuit of a career in software development and I cannot thank everyone at Launch School enough. During my time at Launch School I was able to take what I have learned and build a node application for my company that collects actionable agile data from Jira filters and projects and creates a CSV that can be dumped into an existing spreadsheet we have providing our agile coaches with visibility into our teams' performance.

Brendan Vonick

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

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

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 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

What a program. The amount I have learned throughout these past 11 months is incredible. While I know much of that comes from my own hard-work, I would have no direction without Launch School.

Derek Novak

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

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

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

I truly love how Launch School always gives us chances to improve and never calls anything a failure, even when we think it is. The TAs never gave up on me even when it feels like I've had a million revisions. They always pushed me until I solved everything. That is much better than letting me go without giving me the chance to improve and see how and why I was wrong in my answers. I learned much more that way.

Felicia Bacon

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have always suspected that taking time to get fundamentals engrained—as opposed to rushing through things just to produce "something" quickly—is the best way to go. But life is full of pressures to do the latter, to "beat the clock". I now have something to point to as unmistakeable evidence that slow focus on fundamentals, whenever you have the time to do it, is something that is possible and works. I'm pretty sure I will never again feel ashamed of taking my time to learn something well.

Bethany Pietroniro

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

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

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

I have established a habit of continued learning that I am confident will persist after Core. I now know how to learn something new at depth in an efficient and methodical way. The building blocks are there, and the fundamentals taught at Launch School provide a foundation and scaffolding upon which any further knowledge I care to pursue can be built.

Ginni Pinckert

Launch School gave me the tools to do what I thought would have been impossible a few years ago: land a mid-level software engineering role with a six-figure salary, while having no prior experience in a tech-related field or even a related degree. Capstone put me in a position to start my career 3-5 years ahead of where I would have landed had I attended a traditional bootcamp, with a salary $50K+ higher.

Wayne Olson

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 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 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

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

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

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

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'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 staff and student body are some of the most helpful groups of people I have ever encountered in a learning environment. I particularly enjoy how the early courses present you with countless opportunities for support (TA sessions, SPOT sessions, large problem sets, etc), but then wean you off a bit as you progress.

Derek Novak

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

Larson Laidlaw

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 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

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

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

Choosing Launch School for my software engineering education has been a game-changer in my career. Completing both the Core Curriculum and Capstone program was hands down the best decision I made on my journey to becoming a software engineer, and it paved the way for landing a fantastic role at a top-tier tech company.

El Mehdi

Launch School has it figured out. The US educational system could take a page from the pedagogy. Asynchronous modules with TAs that float around if you need any help. Study groups and seminars abound. LS has revolutionized how I approach the learning process.

Justin Shaber

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

Focusing on the fundamentals of programming in the beginning was so very worth it. When I started on the front-end of the curriculum, I was worried learning JavaScript was going to be a stumbling block. Learning about programming, problem solving and Ruby had been difficult for me. But because I did spend the time to master PEDAC and the fundamentals of programming I picked up JavaScript without too much difficulty. The focus on critical thinking and systematic problem solving has been a game changer to how I approach problems and given me confidence in my abilities to solve any challenge I face.

Stephanie Malek

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

Ian Eustis

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

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

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

Despite the challenges I faced throughout my journey in Core, the curriculum surpassed all my expectations. I am genuinely impressed by its thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and rigorous nature. Completing Core has been a transformative experience for me. I am amazed by the new skills I've acquired and feel genuinely confident about my prospects in the field of software engineering moving forward.

Harold Camacho

I feel that I've been expertly mentored into a discipline that might otherwise be unthinkably hard to break into, and at this point I have the background and confidence to undertake novel development tasks.

Mike Johnson

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

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

I learned that mastery-based learning really works! I had a couple of pauses in my studying throughout the backend, and I was always amazed when I came back to the curriculum how much knowledge I had actually retained even after my time off. It's really fun to get further into the curriculum and see connections with earlier material - and it makes you appreciate how essential it really is to master that earlier material before moving on.

Ping Honzay

I've developed resiliance, and a growth mindset. I used to have limiting beliefs that certain subjects were too difficult to grasp and would give up easily. I now have the self-confidence to know that I can learn anything with enough time and hard work. I've learned how to study deeply and effectively through the prep course material.

Peter Hua

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

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

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

Chris Durand

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

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

I am not only leaving this program with strong fundamental knowledge of programming but also with a newfound confidence that if there is something that needs focus and dedication I can take it on. This has been one of the most challenging and rewarding things I have ever done in my life and I cannot thank you all enough.

Jake deVarennes

I was extremely impressed with Launch School staff during RB101-185. Responses to the forums were prompt and thoughtful and helped me explore more of the problem domain and further my learning. Feedback on assessments was fair and thorough so that I left each course feeling like I had mastered the material. My interviews were all outstanding and my interviewers were professional, friendly, and challenged me to think outside the box with my technical skills as well as practice my non-technical skills.

Madeline

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

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 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

The back-end curriculum has been a long journey already. It's honestly really confidence-building to reflect on where I was when I started (and restarted) Prep to where I am now capable of building web applications that address challenges I may encounter in daily life.

Christopher Douglas

As a Launch School student, I can attest to the transformative power of the program. The curriculum is challenging, but the effort invested pays off in the form of true confidence. This program has elevated my programming skills to new heights, and I couldn't be more thrilled about a career in this field. It took some time, but it was worth it.

Hernando

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

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

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 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 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 think the overall guided mastery-based approach has been the biggest, most helpful aspect of Launch School so far. My experience with programming before LS was mostly self-directed, and while I naturally approach challenges by pursuing mastery, the breadth of the field was very intimidating. The guidance and curriculum here has opened so many doors for me. Excited to continue!

Scott Hoecker

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 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

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

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

Josh Hinman

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

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

Anthony Licari

Queens, New York, USA

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

Launch School's rigorous and in-depth training bridged the gap between my previous career and the tech industry. The emphasis on fundamentals, mastery-based approach, and collaborative learning environment gave me the confidence and competence to present myself as a strong candidate to tech companies, ultimately securing a rewarding position in a highly competitive job market.

Christopher Brum

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

Riz Syed

Within my first month of my job, I have been trusted with leading major projects and features at my first company not only because of how strong my understanding and mastery of fundamental concepts are, but also because of my ability to communicate those ideas effectively to my peers.

Stephen Watzman

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

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

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

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

With Launch School's mastery based learning & transparency around Capstone graduates' excellent results, I felt very comfortable joining Launch School & pursuing a software engineering career.

Alex Bair

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

Peter Karth

Rocky Mount, NC, USA

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

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

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

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

Perhaps the most ephemeral and most important things I have gained are a sense of confidence and purpose. The community at Launch School has been such an incredible asset over the course of my journey through Core. The camaraderie and encouragement I have received are both rare and special.

Ginni Pinckert

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I started Core, my tech background consisted of Codecademy tutorials and Udemy courses. Launch School offered the promise to take that interest and develop a strong foundation in technical skills to take advantage of all of the opportunities in the tech industry. This program has given me exactly what I'd hoped for. On top of teaching me everything I know about programming, it's given me the tools and confidence to learn anything I need to learn, continue to grow as a developer, and find a great job.

Forrest Klausmeier

Rather than any concept or mental model, I think the greatest thing that I've learned with the back end, is that I am capable of anything with some discipline, I have managed to get a bachelors degree before, but was never a good student, but with Launch School help I have reinvented myself and know I consider myself an excellent student, with the confidence to learn anything that I want to.

Raphael Costa

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

Timothy Cummings

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

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

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

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 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

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

Jacob deVarennes

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

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

The mix of technical, practical and theoretical learning was consistently balanced. It seemed like a significant amount of effort and time over the years was put into ensuring every course was matched with an assessment that would guarantee our retainment of concepts would not be temporary

Marwan Zaarab

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

Sheng Yeong

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I couldn't recommend Launch School and Capstone enough to folks looking to launch their careers in tech -- especially from non-traditional backgrounds.

Sarah Voshall

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

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

Kristen Wilde

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

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

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

Kelvin Wong

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

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

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

Jordan Eggers

Progressing through Launch School has helped me build confidence and add structure to how I approach software development. This not only includes being able to think in a more methodical way, but it also includes how I structure my code scripts and tackle new problems. I feel more confident in myself as a programmer and budding Software Engineer

Arno

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

Charlie Reese

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 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

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

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

The most helpful resource that the backend courses offer is the abundance of practice opportunities. In addition to the periodic exercises throughout the main course-work, there are SO many extra exercises to work through for most of the courses. These provide so much practice that by the time I had worked through them, I always felt confident in my grasp of the concepts.

Zach Morgan

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

I admire how Launch School sticks to its foundational convictions - the way mastery-based learning is encouraged and reinforced over and over again throughout the curriculum has really helped me to internalize it, almost as a philosophy. This has, simply put, changed my life. It has changed my approach to learning in basically all contexts I come across.

Bethany Pietroniro

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

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 material is top notch. The assignments, quizzes, and exercises are of such high quality, and made clear many topics that used to be fuzzy. The projects are fun, challenging, and have an appropriate scope. My theoretical knowledge was cemented while building practical skills.

Peter Hua

So many times I've gone into a problem overwhelmed and thinking I won't be able to solve it, only to have a viable solution in my head while still working through the PEDAC steps. I still need to improve my PEDAC process, but it has been a game changer.

Adam Mrachek

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

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

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'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

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 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

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

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

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

During the interview process, I found myself needing to quickly grasp Python—a programming language not covered in Launch School's curriculum. To my surprise, within just a few days, I successfully passed a take-home test and a live coding interview.

Alex Riviere

TAs were always willing to listen and help. Every TA I interacted with throughout the back-end courses was incredibly kind. I always felt the LS staff (and even fellow students) were in my corner rooting for my success. That is a rarity from my past educational experiences.

Jesse Smith

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

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

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

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

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 enjoyed preparing for and completing assessments. They seemed well-designed for us to apply concepts learned within the course, but extending things in interesting ways. I felt they both helped test our learning, but also continue the teaching. The ability to get detailed feedback (especially on the early assessments) was great and part of what I believe makes LS special.

James Chew

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

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

I would describe myself as an absolute beginner when I started LS, having very little coding experience. What little programming exposure I had was worthless because it came from random college classes that I didn't care about. By the time I was finishing up 130, I felt as if I could implement anything I wanted to in code. This whole experience has been so motivating and empowering.

Zach Morgan

Having blinders on, a clear path forward and permission not to be distracted made a huge difference in my learning outcome. Core has encouraged habits of being pro-actively and productively curious. The learning how to learn aspect has had considerable carry over to my other pursuits.

Richard Cole

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

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

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

The community at Launch School is second to none. There are so many people from alumni, staff, and students who want to help you succeed. In the Slack channels I see staff constantly answering questions and trying to be helpful. Whenever I have asked a staff member a question it has always been met with a thoughtful and supportive answer.

Cameron Bibb

Launch School teaches mastery for web development, but I truly believe it also paves the way for self growth in other areas of your life. After completing Core, my Launch School friends and I met up in Gather to chat. We all came to the same conclusion - Launch School changed our lives. That is another thing I will forever be grateful for.

Rachele Lang

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

The interview assessments were, as nerve-inducing as they were, very useful. I'm sure there are plenty of technically capable engineers out there. However, in order to set myself apart, I need to hone my soft skills. Getting a chance to practice them in an official setting has been priceless.

Mai Khuu

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

I've had several attempts to learn programming over the years. The internal cohesion of the curriculum has made this attempt the most successful.

Richard Cole

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

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

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

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 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

Launch School gave me the confidence and skills to be able to land my job as a Software Engineer - my dream job, location, and team (with a fantastic salary to add on top of that). Not only were my interviewers impressed with my Capstone project but they also were impressed with my understanding of the fundamentals. They even mentioned that a lot of engineers aren't solid on the fundamentals like I was! I'm forever grateful to Launch School for the curriculum, instructors, and support!

Emily Olszewski

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

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 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

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

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

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

Bharat Agarwal

I’m over a year past graduation and onto my second job and I still receive invaluable support and encouragement from Capstone staff and the alumni community. If I had to start over today, I would absolutely pick Launch School Core + Capstone again.

Ben Perrault

From the perspective of mastery based learning, not only have I learned the fundamentals of a couple of languages quite thoroughly, but I've learned so much about how to learn programming concepts well. In this field that changes as rapidly as it does, this is perhaps the most valuable skill I've been able to hone since enrolling at Launch School.

Luke Carlson

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

I never imagined that I could switch to a completely different career in my 40s, completely unrelated to anything I've done before and without having to get a traditional degree, and LS is making that possible.

Wayne Olson

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

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

Arjun Rajkumar

Bengaluru, India

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Launch School has helped me to remember that there is joy and excitement in the learning and in the journey to get where I'm going.

Austin Nelson

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

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

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 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

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 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

Throughout the back-end journey that seemingly results in the ability to make a CRUD app, there are numerous awarenesses and competencies suffused in the curriculum that cause a Launch School student to become a well rounded software development student.

Mike Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

David Besserman

Paris, France

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

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

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 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

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

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 become a proficient web developer. I can work in multiple programming languages. I can meet other software engineers out "in the wild" and hold intelligible conversations with them about their work. I can write intelligently and break down technical concepts in a meaningful way.

Ginni Pinckert

When I first decided to change careers and pursue software development, my goal was to become just good enough to land an entry level job, with the hope that I could build a career from there. Launch School has changed my expectations radically. It has given me such a depth of programming knowledge and problem solving experience that I feel like I am in control of where I take my career. I have already been offered multiple software jobs without ever looking for them!

Zach Morgan

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

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

Letladi Sebesho

Johannesburg, South Africa

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

I'm confident that I can learn new languages and models using the fundamental skills I learned from Core. Even though there's no diploma or tangible reward at the end of Core, I'm immensely proud of this achievement.

Tony K

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

Roy Zinn

Tel Aviv, Israel

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

Core Curriculum worked really well for me because it's self-paced. Removing time-related pressures from the learning process made it feel less like work and more like an opportunity to explore my curiosity, and I retained so much of the information as a result.

Cody Williams

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

Andrew Crotwell

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

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

Yufei Chen

Melbourne, Australia

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

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

Kris Denert

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

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

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

Max Appleton

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

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

My communication skills have been refined. I've never been challenged to write and speak with the level of clarity and precision demanded from the assesments.

Peter Hua

I found that the concepts learned in the course surprisingly resonated with other aspects of life. This unexpected correlation has added depth to my learning experience and provided a broader perspective, making this course not only an academic journey but also a personal development one.

Nicolas

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

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

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

I am no longer surprised, but continue to appreciate how professional, courteous, and genuinely helpful the Launch School staff has been throughout my journey here. There is never a question I feel like I can't ask, and interactions with staff have been consistently helpful and focused on assisting in my development as a learner.

Lawton Stephens

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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

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 focus on the fundamentals helped me start a career pivot into software engineering with a strong understanding of the fundamentals. Without Launch School and it's dedication to understanding the basic building blocks, I wouldn't have made the decision to pursue a software engineering career.

Alex Bair

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 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

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 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

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

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

I am totally blown away by, and beyond grateful for, the effectiveness and design of this curriculum. I feel like I've transformed as a programmer over this past year of studying. I'm fluent with code in a way I couldn't have imagined before starting.

Bethany Pietroniro

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

Bethany Pietroniro

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

Throughout my time at Launch School, from RB101 to RB185, the support from the staff has always been exceptional. Whenever I needed help with an issue, I knew I could count on the TAs to help me. I'd post my problem on Slack, and one of the TAs would quickly come to my aid.

Garry Ledwith

Launch School's staff and curriculum are top notch.

Timothy Cummings

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

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

I gained more than just knowledge during my time working through the core curriculum, and I wouldn't even regard that knowledge as the largest part of my reward for that time. I gained skills and confidence and a future which previously I could only think about in terms of vague fantasy. I also made quite a few friends.

Del

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

Far and away the most useful concept I learned was how to systematically decompose a problem and maintain a cool head while doing so. I’ve learned that given enough time and effort, most every problem is solvable.

Robert Ruhlman

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

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

Raul Romero Cano

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

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

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

Ezra Ellette

Surprisingly, I found the assessments the most helpful of all. I don't think I would have retained as much knowledge just flying through the course. The assessments made me master the work.

Nathan Banek

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

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

There will always be topics in software that I come across that I don't immediately know/understand, but the base foundation I gained from Launch School has given me the confidence to know that I can figure it out. I really appreciated the thoroughness of the curriculum and I know it will serve me well in the future.

Dylan Spyer

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

The community, support, and genuineness of the program's intentions in wanting to make you the best developer possible was something I had never experienced in an online course before.

Marwan Zaarab

The back-end curriculum is so step-by-step and so deftly constructed that it has ushered me through an arc of development that I could never have achieved without the Launch School curriculum.

Mike Johnson

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

PEDAC is still useful after all this time!

Trisha C

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

Arthur Kauffman

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

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 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

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 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

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

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

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

Launch School taught me how to learn. The rigorous assessments coupled with high-quality learning material really improved my technical skills. I am now confident that I will be able to master whatever I want in the future.

Riz Syed

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

Cristian Rennella

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 also really appreciate how LS staff members always leave detailed feedback on assessments, even after I have passed them. I almost always learn something new that I had missed while studying.

Zach Morgan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

Learning fundamentals has truly changed my life. It taught me how to be thorough, patient and always striving to truly understand something.

Felicia Bacon

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

These courses made me understand what programming is. I had no programming background before this but just learning and becoming familiar with what it takes to build a web application at a foundational level was enjoyable. I found that all the material was clear as to what was important to know.

Bradley Taylor

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

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

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

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 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

Outstanding - I'm so appreciative of the staff and the support that we get here at Launch School. The TA-led study sessions in 101-120 were immensely helpful. I also really appreciate the detailed feedback that we get on assessments and code reviews. The free workshops like the "Study Tips for Launch School" workshop were immensely helpful when I was first starting out.

Ping Honzay

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 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

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

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

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

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'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

What stood out is how careful and rigorous the assessment gradings are. It's at a different level to anything I've experienced academically so far. I think this is a very good thing.

Joe Cardoso

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

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

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

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

I've had the best experience during Core. Its really been great and I've learned so much. The variety of assessments were wonderful for my growth and were always pushing me into discomfort (a good thing).

Matt Register

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 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

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

Andy Jakubowski

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

Launch School and Capstone was my gateway from teaching music to software engineering. It was the perfect path for me - the ideal blend of structured curriculum and self-paced flexibility. I never doubted that completing Core and then Capstone would result in a six figure career-launching role at an incredible company and (spoiler alert) it did!

Sarah Voshall

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

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

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

The focus on fundamentals in Core provides an effective set of tools to define and solve problems, while also helping you gain a high degree of familiarity with programming languages and their unique characteristics. Capstone offers a thorough transition into exploring and dealing with industry-standard software engineering problems. Working together with a team for months on a challenging issue exposes you to many different aspects of software engineering work such as debugging, estimations, and picking up relevant knowledge very quickly.

Aashish Balaji

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

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

Liz Fedak

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

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 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 especially appreciated the code reviews that TAs provided in RB101 and 120. I understand that these are somewhat time-consuming, but the willingness of staff members to give detailed feedback on larger projects is one of the best support resources LS offers.

Zach Morgan

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

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

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

Capstone took everything to the next level. The program transformed me from someone who could solve coding problems into a real engineer. As a result, even in today’s tough job market, I was able to land a role I never even dreamed of getting, as a Software Engineer at Stripe!

Grace Lim

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

Liam Brady

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

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

Revising assessments after being graded ensured my understanding was rock solid. In the past, I would have been satisfied with an A. There was never the time to back fill any gaps of understanding after completing a course in traditional schooling. By the time I was a professional in my previous field, I realized that my knowledge was built on shaky foundations. The self paced nature of the Launch School enabled me to build strong fundamental knowledge.

Peter Hua

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

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

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