Launch School Love, Appreciation, & Results

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

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

Chris Durand

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

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

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

Launch School has opened my eyes to my own possibilities.

Jenae Janzen

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

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 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

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

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

Demba Siby

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

Caleb Heath

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

Angel Ruiz-Bates

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

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 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

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

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

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

Nabil Kazerouni

The 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

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

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'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 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

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 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

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

Jevon Hayter

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

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

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

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

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

Zach DuBow

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

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

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

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

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

Kelvin Wong

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

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

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

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

Jay de la Torre

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

Andy Jakubowski

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

Ying Chyi Gooi

Denver

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

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

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

Bharat Agarwal

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

Linus Phan

The 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

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

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

Arjun Rajkumar

Bengaluru, India

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

Sheng Yeong

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

Timothy Cummings

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

Anthony Licari

Queens, New York, USA

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

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

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

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 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

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

Charlie Reese

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

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

Christian Larwood

Launch School's staff and curriculum are top notch.

Timothy Cummings

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

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

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'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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Max Appleton

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

Yufei Chen

Melbourne, Australia

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

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

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

Will Lotherington

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

Nabil Kazerouni

I 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

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

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

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

Ezra Ellettte

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

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

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

Vincent DeVendra

Boston, MA, USA

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

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

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

Peter Karth

Rocky Mount, NC, USA

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 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

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

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 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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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'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 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

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

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

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 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 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 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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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

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

Daniel Schonfeld

Los Angeles, California, USA

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

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

Jacob Coker-Dukowitz

I 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

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 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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

Cristian Rennella

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

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

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

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

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

Larson Laidlaw

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

Even after accepting a lead instructor position with a notable bootcamp, I was unsatisfied with my career trajectory. It was only once I joined Capstone that I saw the true power of "just-in-time" learning. I refined my understanding of higher level concepts, designed and built an amazing project with a distributed team, and landed an engineering role with a world-class organization led by a legendary tech entrepreneur.

Derick Gross

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

Andrew Jones

I 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

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'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

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

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

Andy Jakubowski

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

Letladi Sebesho

Johannesburg, South Africa

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

Liam Brady

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

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

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

Kristen Wilde

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian Eustis

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

Arthur Kauffman

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

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

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

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

Ben Zelinski

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

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

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

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

Josh Hinman

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

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

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

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

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

David Besserman

Paris, France

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

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

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

Tyler Guillen

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

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

Mat Sachs

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

Laura Davies

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

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

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

Andrew Crotwell

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

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

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

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

Natalia Baeza

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

Patrick Brennan

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 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

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 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

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

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

Steve Kolock

New York

I 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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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 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

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

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 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 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

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

Josh Hinman

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

Kris Denert

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

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

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

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

Shane Rostad

I 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

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