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.
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These are articles that current students are writing about while working through Launch School. Topics range from technical explanations to reflections on learning to mastery. Great results are obvious when the curriculum is rigorous enough, but if you really want to get an idea of what it feels like while on the journey to mastery, read these reflections.
Spinning Your Wheels: The Fear of Missing Out
Avoiding the Career Transition Trap
Not Yet
Launch School Mistakes
An intro to Expressions and Statements in JavaScript
Finally Finished Launch School JS109, Here’s the Story.
The dreaded "not yet"
Programming Concepts: How to Make Them Stick
Breaking the MagiJSian's Code: JavaScript Object Creation Patterns, Revealed!
Comic: A Very Basic Explanation of How the Internet Works
Announcing Capstone Project Mentors
Podcast S2E10: Study Habits Conference and The Social Network with Liz, Jesse, and Katarina
JS101: Understanding Return Values for Method Chaining
What helped me get ready for Launch School’s RB 109 live assessment
Do you need to be good at math to become a programmer?
How the Internet Works, Part I - The Internet Infrastructure
This article is about prototypes and prototypal inheritance. Mainly trying to explain confusing terms around this topic. As this was one of the most challenging concepts in OOP, I hope seeing another perspective on the topic will be beneficial for other students.
Why Launch School is better than a bootcamp/college/mooc
Recap 2020
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Someone who would have loved and fit right in with Launch School!
RubyConf 2020 -- Launch School Retrospective
Sailing Through PEDAC: the Left & Right Brain Approach
Preparing for my first live coding assessment: Launch School’s RB109 Interview
Thankful, 2020
Stay On the Path Thoughts on learning to code as a father of two young kids
After the Core Curriculum
Podcast S2E9: Student Panel Discussion
When am I ready to take Launch School’s 109 interview?
JS OOP Deep-Dive: Object.assign
Turning array-like objects into arrays with JavaScript
Learn OOP the Fun Way: Build a Command Line Frogger Game
Encapsulation, Polymorphism, and Abstraction in Ruby (review for RB120-129)
Studious Learners
Are you upset about your grade? This one is for you
Encapsulation, Polymorphism, and Abstraction in Ruby
My RB109 written assessment experience in Launch School
The Guide I wish I had for JavaScript Object Creation Patterns
Podcast S2E8: Community Learning at the SPOT with Leena, Rodney, and Christian!
Using Gremlins (1984) to Understand Non-Mutating vs Mutating Methods in Ruby
Rack: Part II
Rack: Part 1
An Analogy for Variable Scope
Learning Software Development — Focusing on Fundamentals
Facing the Scary Parts: LS Exercise ‘After Midnight’
A shallow dive into the 'constructor' property in Javascript
What to expect from Launch School’s RB109 Written Assessment
What people misunderstand about Launch School
Ruby - Hashes and Mutable Default Values
Getting to know Launch School’s JS129 assessments
JavaScript Scope, Hoisting, and Closure Exercises
Are interview assessments brutal? (they're not)
Launch School Written Assessment Tips
7 Things I Learned from my Written Assessment
Overcoming test anxiety to pass Launch School’s RB109 written assessment
Deferred Payment Program Webinar Recording (Sept 3rd, 2020)
Secret Sauce Comes in Many Flavors
Launch School’s 109 Written Assessment: A Non-Native English Speaker’s Perspective
The Speed of Mastery: My Pacing at Launch School
Local variable scoping rules when Ruby converts a Proc into a block.
Announcing Our Deferred Payment Program
The Pros & Cons of Codewars for Launch School Assessments
Keep Calm and Code
Some of the things I can now fully appreciate after finishing most of the core curriculum
4 Years Ago I Decided to Be a Self-Taught Developer Instead of Going to College
Procrastination and Changing Habits
Educational Entrapment
How does the Internet work?
A comparative guide to JavaScript's object creation patterns
A Comprehensive List of RB109 Practice Problems & Other Tips
When Coding Goes Wrong: Or, My Advice for Launch School’s 109 Interview Assessment
Lessons from the Core Curriculum
2019 Capstone Salary Retrospective
Podcast S2E7: Sunny Beatteay comes by the podcast to chat about Digital Ocean, his day to day there, how he got promoted so quickly, and salary numbers. And really, so much more.
My Preparation Process for the LS 129 Written Assessment
Preparing for the 129 Interview Assessment
The Night before the Live Assessment
JS109 Written assessment - Afterword
On preparing for - and FINALLY taking - the Launch School RB109 assessment
Why (insert previous job here) should become programmers
Letter to a Launch School n00b
Exploring let, const and var
Fully Re-embracing the Fuzziness: Unpausing the Launch School After a Long Hiatus
JS Prototypes
Recap on JS129 Assessment Preparation
Encapsulation –a quick explanation of a core concept of object-oriented programming with Ruby
Programming Clickbait
entropy.reverse!
My General Tips and Learning from JS101 and JS109
My Complete Study Guide for the JavaScript 109 Written & Interview Assessment
Podcast S2E6: From Launch School to making $250k at Facebook
Problem-Solving Patterns: Parsing
Launch School 109 Interview Assessment: Tips for Internal Processors
Notes on Learning to Program During a Pandemic
An Open Love Letter to Launch School
Towards a Conceptual Model of Object Oriented Programming
Our First Non-Five Star Review
A feedback about my experience so far, how much time it took to complete js101, why I chose JavaScript track, what I liked and describe my expectations for the JS109 Assessment.
My Study Tips for the JS129 Assessment
Dealing with Nerves and Assessments at Launch School
Launch School’s First Assessment for JavaScript Track (JS109)
First Assessment Experience (RB 109)
Deep Equality Comparison of JavaScript Objects
Object-Oriented Javascript Methods: Comparing Pseudo-Classical, OLOO, and the 2015 Class Syntax
Preparing for the JS109 Interview Assessment
Podcast S2E5: Six figure remote job
A Beginner’s Guide to Surviving Launch School 101
JavaScript: A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Spread and Rest Syntax
Launch School: Learnings From Week of 2/12/2020
Passing Launch School's First Assessments: RB109
We turned our $30k marketing budget into scholarships
Recording: How to Navigate a Recession
Podcast S2E4 - Gabe, Ben, and Arthur on the importance of studying together and community.
Using Ampersand (&) with blocks in Ruby
Launch School's Response to Covid-19
Javascript Implicit Return using Arrow Functions
Halfway Point of Launch School
Ky’s (Somewhat Poignant) Guide to Subjectively Thinking Objectively
Podcast S2E3 - Sasha Prodan
How Does The Internet Work?
Reflections of a Launch School Alumnus
5 Study Lessons from a Beginner
Post First Project Thoughts
4 Pillars of Object-Oriented Programming: Encapsulation, Polymorphism, Inheritance, and Abstraction
Understanding Currying in JavaScript—A Practical Guide
Two Ruby patterns around map and reduce
Launch School Podcast S2 Episode 2 is Live!
SQL Indexing for Devs — Part 2: Practical Indexing Advice
SQL Indexing for Devs — Part 1: Execution Plans
How the Internet Works
Learning at Work
The Race to Explain the Internet
Launch School Podcast Season 2 is live!
Joining Integers, Making Strings
Thinking Slow
Learn To Struggle
(Another) AMA with a Launch School Capstone Grad
How Long Will It Take?
Close Your Eyes, Breathe, and then…Jump in
7 Problem-Solving Principles to Adhere to In Your Programming Journey
Thankful
De-Isolate Your Studying
If You Give a Programmer a Cookie
Planning, Pivoting, and Mastery
How I Memorized Rails Routes
Ky's Guide 1.2 - The Powers of Preparation and Procrastination
Threads to Chains
What I did after I completed the Launch School Core Curriculum
Reviewing the Launch School Core Curriculum
Managing Anxiety in Launch School Assessments
Reflections on a Bad Problem Solving Process
Rebuilding A Career After Stay at Home Parenthood
The Definitive Guide For Creating Ruby Gems
Why fundamentals are important?
Tips on Studying Part-Time at Launch School
What's up with the & (ampersand) in Ruby closures?
"Just in Time" Learning
Cloning in JavaScript v. Cloning in Ruby
How to Prepare for Getting Stuck on a Launch School Interview Assessment
Reflections at the Halfway Point
Clarifying "this" in JavaScript
When JavaScript Goes 'Splat'
The names you choose in programming
Storing Objects in YAML with Ruby
My Favourite Codewars Kata to Prepare for Launch School's 109 Oral Assessment
Launch School’s Course 202 — A Traveler’s Guide
15 Tips for the Road to Mastery...in Launch School
Tips for Launch School Assessment-139
How I Prepared for Launch School's 109 Written Assessment
Rotation Braid
The Road So Far: RB120 and 129
A Place to Start
Embracing Structured Problem Solving
Iterating in Ruby: 4 ways to go
Thanks Launch School - a life-changing experience !
My Study Habits
Object-Oriented Programming in Ruby. Basics and definitions (2/2)
Simple Ideas, Well Executed
Joining the Curve
Job hunt without breaking yourself
Tricky OOP Rules to Remember
Short Term vs Long Term
Object-Oriented Programming in Ruby. Basics and definitions (1/2)
Sometimes the key to learning fast is looking dumb
The Road So Far: RB101 and RB109
Notes From the Halfway Point
From biology to computer programming: review after 6 months with Launch School
Would you rather get what you want to slowly or get what you don’t want much faster?
Am I a “real” Software Engineer yet?
Medium is the Hardest
Why PEDAC is like Chocolate Cake
Reflection: After Launch School’s Core Curriculum
How I Navigated the Job Hunt and Landed My Dream Job
A New Thing for High School Students
HTTP Request — Response Cycle, a Letter in the Mail (pt.2)
JavaScript Closures
Ruby Quick Reference
Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock!
Why do programming bootcamps fail to live up to their job placement expectations?
Mastery-based Learning with Chris Lee (podcast episode)
How I Architected a Single-Page React Application: Part II — Redux
How I Architected a Single-Page React Application: Part I — Data Structures, Components, and APIs
Tips for the Launch School RB109 Assessment
Tips for the Launch School RB139 Assessment
Ruby as a Second Language
Rubocop Musings
My review of the launch school core curriculum and other thoughts
Discipline vs. Enthusiasm From Beginner to… Sophisticated Beginner
Coding crisis: Stuck in a loop
What The Heck are Collaborator Objects?
HTTP Request — Response Cycle, a Letter in the Mail
Using Ruby's .digits method
Solid Study Habits for Coders
Using Ruby's .zip method to combine arrays
How To Approach Any Algorithm Interview Without Panicking
A practical guide to containers
From an idea to a working game in 7 days — part 3
From an idea to a working game in 7 days — part 2
From an idea to a working game in 7 days — part 1
The Physical Side of Programming
Arrow function: forEach, $.each, .each
Building SpaceCraft: A Real-Time Collaborative REPL
Full time job AND Launch School?
My List of Books & Resources for LS Students
This is an article about how to deploy an AWS Lambda function via the AWS console, AWS command line interface, and the AWS software developer kit.
Thoughts on Await and Try...Catch
BAM! — A Serverless Framework
Building bam-lambda.com using BAM!
Arrow function: What is this? (1)
The Basics Of OOP Ruby: An Overview Of Key Concepts
Elevate Your Learning
It’s Not About Content
Reflections on my Journey and Launch School After Course 101
500 Hours Learning Programming Fundamentals Taught In 10–30 Hours By Other Sites
Preparing For My First Launch School Assessment
AMA with a Launch School Capstone Graduate
The EDD Theorem for Education Design
What are Web Workers
Launch School Stories
The Dangers of Learning Just Enough
Having Fun with PEDAC Approach, List and Functional Abstractions
MDN vs. Launch School
Rules Are Meant to Be Broken: Ruby’s Shorthand for Methods that Don’t Take an Argument
How Can Full Stack Developers Learn So Many Skills?
How Long Does it Take to Become a Full-Stack Developer?
New JavaScript Debugging Exercises
JavaScript Object Creation and the Prototype Chain
JavaScript Design Patterns: Building a Mental Model
An Education Engineer’s Approach to Teaching
A Closer Look at the BCrypt Gem
JavaScript Weekly: Graceful Error Handling
First Programming Language and Learning Approach Matters!
Can a 10-12 Week Coding Bootcamp Turn You into a Full Stack Web Developer?
JavaScript Weekly: Data Types and Mutability
A Tale of Two Websites: the importance of slow progress and self-reflection
Building A Location Finder App Powered by the Google Maps JavaScript API
JavaScript Weekly: Making Sense of Closures
How I Discovered Launch School
We're Not a Bootcamp
JavaScript Weekly: Learning Alone, Together
JavaScript Weekly: Understanding Links on the Object Prototype Chain
Why I chose Launch School for my Software Development journey
How to Stand Out During the Tech Interview
JavaScript Weekly: An Introduction to Iteration and Enumerability
Easily Deploy your Sinatra app to DigitalOcean with Docker
JavaScript Weekly: Using a Structured Problem-Solving Approach
How I went from student to drop out to software engineer
JavaScript Weekly: Fundamental Object Design Patterns
JavaScript Weekly: An Introduction to First-Class Functions
JavaScript Weekly: What in the World is this?!
Sinatra From Scratch: Building a toy version of a Ruby web framework from the ground up.
JavaScript Weekly: All About Scope
Building Layr: An Experimental Decentralized Cloud Storage System
The Two-Layer Problem
Knowing is not enough: You need tactics too — How to be prepared for Launch School written assessments
A Brief History of PostgreSQL
Ruby Methods: String#gsub
The Dangers of Instant Gratification Learning
HARD Goals - Part 2
Taking a study break with a side project
From Bootcamp to Mastery: A Five Year Journey
How to Succeed on the 209 Assessment
What I Learned About Life by Learning to Code
Announcing Our New Website
Mastery-based Learning at Launch School
"We don't even teach PHP," or Learning the Fundamentals
Riding with Training Wheels: a Good Learning Platform Let’s You Focus on the Important Stuff
Beginner's mental model of ruby object model
Why You Need an Interview Script
What it took to land my dream software engineering job
Mind the Gap…Mind the Gap!
My Journey to Become a Programmer: Letting Go of Anxiety Towards Uncertainty
The JavaScript Pseudoclassical Object Creation Pattern: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough
Pour Some (Syntactic) Sugar On Me
Tech and Talk: A Webinar Series
Understanding Git and GitHub
Reflections on Capstone and Solving Large Problems
JavaScript Expressions and Statements
Capstone week 6.5: A balance of research, learning new technology, and learning how to learn
Object Oriented Design: Part 1 - Purpose
Capstone Week 5: Know-how is Useless Without 'Know-why' and How to Learn Frameworks Like an Engineer
Halfway There: Reflections After 9 Months With Launch School
Capstone week 4: Problem Solving on the Shoulders of Giants
Capstone week 3: Mastery Vs Comfort
Passing variables to blocks when chaining collection methods
Capstone Week 2: Recursion and Dynamic Programming
How Launchschool Saved My Life
Solving Coding Problems With PEDAC
Capstone Week 1: The power of a Good Mental Model
The Fast Track for Impatient Hacks to a Gig in Software Tinkering
Two ways of thinking
Building Conclave: a decentralized, real time, collaborative text editor. (Capstone Project, August 2017 cohort)
On Launch School Written Assessments
Darth Vader is a mouth-breather (and what that has to do with your coding studies)
Reflections on 2017 —LaunchSchool vs Coding Bootcamps
A Bunch of Sets
How Do We Grow?
Breaking Into the Programming Mindset
JavaScript ES6 var-let-const
Developing a Good Habit on Making the Original Object Immutable
Things I’ve done to support my Launch School habit
Maintaining Motivation While Living Life On The Plateau
Event Delegation & Bubbling
Six Questions to Understand the CSS Box Model
Consistency: the key to success
On Excursions and Distractions
Introduction to Functional Abstractions In JavaScript
Lean Forward, then Backflip
The Technical Interview: Learning How To Be Uncomfortable
Tic Tac Toe in Terminal
"No object is an island"
Launch School So Far
Advice for 109 Written Assessment (4 part series)
3 simple steps for writing recursive methods in Ruby (or any other language)
How I Built a Custom Framework and App with Rack: Part 1
Pseudo Classical Style vs Objects Linking to Other Objects, in their own voices.
JavaScript: Building Custom Functions, for Greater Programming Enjoyment
Keep Pushing Through the Pain
Demystifying Ruby Applications, Ruby Application Servers, and Web Servers
Params in Rails: Where do they come from? Rails Params Explained
On LaunchSchool Interview Assessments
How to Solve a 1 kyu Kata on Codewars
Infinite Recursion and Variable Scope in JavaScript
Working with the DOM
Object-Oriented JavaScript
Mastery
When will I be a “real” software developer?
Objects, Context and Closures
JavaScript Fundamentals
Time tracking my coding and learning…
Destructive Methods with No Bang (!)
JavaScript Prototypal Inheritance: Constructors vs. OLOO
Practice makes Precision
Year One (at Launch School)
What I Learned From Practicing Live Coding with Another Student at Launch School
At My Edge: Number Bases
Am I Doing Launch School Right?
The Tediousness of the Plateau
Browser and Web APIs
A journey of a thousand miles...
Diligence vs Enthusiasm
Reflections and Advice I've Found Useful
Applications and Tools I've Found Useful
Intentional Coding
This is from the Twilio blog and is only included here because one of our own Launch School students is featured! Congrats Ryan!
A flexible Bannerize program, a walk-through on problem solving and decomposition.
Speed up your Sinatra development with OpeningAct
My Burnout Experience at Launch School
Setting HARD Goals - Part 1 (from a book by Mark Murphy)
How to learn better and why I am continuing my learning with Launch School.
How Long Does It Take?
Using Assessments to Know and Improve Yourself
When You Have An Itch, Scratch It
Mastery Learning and Stoicism
Tools Are Rarely a Limitation
Thoughts on Time Spent Studying
How to Practice Effectively
Why programming, and why Launch School
Update: Challenge 500/60: 200/500 hours
RubyTutor: My first Ruby gem Part 4
RubyTutor: My first Ruby gem Part 3
RubyTutor: My first Ruby gem Part 2
RubyTutor: My first Ruby gem Part 1
How I Prepared For My First Assessment
Challenge 500/60: 100/500 hours
5 Things I learned in 25 Days
How Hard is Hard Work
My System for Learning
How I Am Learning Programming
Even Binding in jQuery
Writing My Way to Mastery
What I’ve Really Learned in 6 Months with Launch School
Learn to Use Your Adjustable Wrench
Transition to Mastery Based Learning
How to prepare for assessments at Launch School.
Just Because You Can Multitask Doesn’t Mean Your Methods Need To
How to Blog about Programming While You're a Student
My 2017 Coding Journey
Self vs @, it's a Decision not a Rule
On Becoming a Software Engineer: Progress Comes to the Persistent
How Being Stumped by One Line of Code Helped me Understand Context in JavaScript
Dissecting Method Calls
Third Time’s The Charm: Circular Learning
Purpose and Discipline
A Look into the Past
A Journey of Mastery
Weakness
How I bombed My Technical Interview in 4 Easy Steps
Free Code Camp vs Launch School
How Not to Build a Robot
Ryan shares his experience writing a script to automate sales outreach!
Thinking
What Programming Language Should You Learn First?
Louis and Jason Met Up and Talked Code!
Launched
The importance of Focusing
Comparing functions in JavaScript and Ruby
Problem Solving
Programming Foundations: Check!
Bad Advice
Learning to Code - The First 90 Days
Matthew Shares His Thoughts after Finishing the First Course
The Little Things
SQL Joins and You
What I've Learned Going Through Launch School's Assessment
@launchschool 's mentality is "Be the candidate a company is desperate to hire rather than be the candidate desperate to be hired"
Hexadecimal Number Validation with Regex in Ruby
Is Learning to Code Hard? Duh.
The First Month of My Launch School Journey
When I came to @launchschool It did not take long to realize that I knew a little about a lot of things, but not a lot of the little things.
Do you really know how functions work?
Many times I tried learning a basic Ruby concept and ended up on something like containers in Docker. It is easy to get lost.
Launch School's Ruby Course on Core Programming
Number Validation with Regex in Ruby
It Takes a Village to Raise a Programmer
Tradeoffs
Learning to program is not easy. Passed on courses that promised superstar status in weeks. The @launchschool path is a game changer.
New webinar series Watch Others Code:
@launchschool Helping women achieve build a career while changing tech #rgsoc #diversifytech
Recursive Fibonnaci Method Explained
If you put in the time and effort, things that seem hard become easy. @launchschool
Transforming Hashes — Which Way is Best?
Enumerators and Enumerable Methods in Ruby
I am happy that @launchschool assesses us early and often. It lets us know what to work on before moving forward. #learntocode #ruby
I honestly can’t recommend these guys enough for anyone else wanting to get started and I urge you to try them out.
The TAs at @launchschool are awesome. My first #ruby #codereview was a great experience. If you want to #learntocode, this is the place.
Check out AcornCache, a configurable HTTP proxy cache written in pure Ruby, built by our students @vincedevendra and @PerryCarbone!
@launchschool doing the prep courses now, and you guys answer my question in the next line I read, loving it so far !
Finally!!! A Dev Program that isn't being paraded around like a Get Rich Quick Scheme! Thank you @launchschool.
wish more people knew about @launchschool everyone I've shown has been impressed with not only the content, but the methodology as well.
not sure why people aren't talking about @launchschool more. it's much better than other coding bootcamps available.
My first 6 weeks of learning to code w/ @launchschool.
So many bootcamps don't care about teaching fundamentals to proficiency, which explains why so many bootcamp grads are in our program.
Anything worth learning is worth learning well.