Gabriel Ayela joined the 12-week, full-time Ironhack Cybersecurity bootcamp in November 2020. When we interviewed him in mid-January, and he had completed more than half of the bootcamp. Gabriel is French, lives in Germany, and has worked in the music industry for 10 years: hiring DJs, managing events and concerts, bookings, and networking with musicians were part of his daily life. But he has always been passionate about technology. As a kid, he got his first computer and the first thing he did was to open it to see what was inside and rebuild it again. Due to the pandemic, his work in the music sector was at danger, so he decided to make a radical change. A friend of his studied at Ironhack and recommended it to him. Looking at the programs, he decided to take cybersecurity. And why this one? Gabriel suffered a cyberattack a while ago; someone accessed his accounts and since then, he has been wondering why and how this could have happened. He wanted to understand what is behind a cyberattack. Even though he was interested in coding, he didn’t want to specialize in any language; he wanted to understand the security implications for a company on the technical side. First Days at Ironhack's Cybersecurity Bootcamp Gabriel comments that at first, “I was a bit scared, didn’t know exactly what to expect.” Before classes begin, there is a mandatory, 20 hour pre-work to complete which, according to Gabriel, “really makes you ready for the program. I felt comfortable with the classmates and instructors soon, because they are there to support you, which creates a really interactive and dynamic community.” Regarding the lack of previous experience, he says that “it’s not a barrier. I am interested and passionate. Even though the class finishes at 6pm, I can’t stop, I am always checking new tools, it’s a never-ending topic.” Neither online nor in-person: hybrid! The format of this program is hybrid, which means that it’s taught online and self-guided. During two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, there is one person (the facilitator) who is there to answer questions and checks that all the daily exercises are complete. Thanks to this methodology, all students learn at the same time and combine online learning with live sessions with a person available for help. During the rest of the day, classmates share their questions and best practices in the Slack channel; they can have calls and work together on whatever they need. This format is “perfect for cybersecurity. You need time alone to work in your labs and challenges, but you never feel alone. We use the channel and it feels like being in class. The workload is good, it’s really intense and you need to adapt until you get your working routine.” Gabriel says that he is keeping up with everything now, but the program is getting a bit harder, since it’s an intensive program. What is the Bootcamp Made of? The platform combines videos, case studies, and quizzes that allow students to put themselves in real life situations. We recently had an introduction to Javascript, but there is coding involved. They focused on networks, how to build them, and how to respond and react when facing a cyberattack. At the end of the program, they have to present a group project completed in teams of two during the 12 weeks of the bootcamp. Every two weeks, they give a 30 minute presentation to the rest of the class to explain what they have been working on. The topic that Gabriel chose is “Public transportation and cybersecurity;"cybersecurity is a really broad topic, so there are different roles and each week, they focus on one of these roles. Gabriel feels that “you need to work on your own, be really autonomous and face more challenges” as the program gets deeper in the content. According to his experience, working like this is “really fulfilling, it is you who makes learning possible.” Why Cybersecurity at Ironhack? When he was thinking about making this change, Gabriel looked for other options but most of them were in the US or didn’t have a real follow up and connection with the teachers. “I saw that at Ironhack, the instructors and facilitators are genuinely interested in helping us, to know who we are and support us.” He also values the contact with Careers, they already reached out to the team; he feels that Ironahck “has the great advantage of being focused on job placement. These are unique elements that make this program different.” He has a final tip for those who are thinking about joining Ironhack: “yes, it will be intensive but no fear! It is so exciting that you forget about the difficulties.” If you are thinking about joining a cybersecurity bootcamp but have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to one of our admissions managers and ask any questions you may have! We will be delighted to hear from you.

“Why do you need a web development Bootcamp?”, an old classmate from college asked me. I had just told him I was attending Ironhack’s web dev Bootcamp , and what would have been an ordinary catch up turned into a challenging discussion about what a developer can take from an intensive course of coding. I understand it may seem an unlikely career choice, so I decided to share some lessons I, a junior developer, learned from my bootcamp experience. Self learning is not always the best learning method It’s common knowledge that the most important skill a developer can have is not their knowledge, but their capacity to learn. The tech industry moves fast, so every ambitious developer knows they can never settle for long. And that was also what my Bootcamp was about. I didn’t learn formulas but how to look for the solution to any particular problem. Of course, in terms of contents, I could self learn the same, but it would be like exercising on my own: I can do it, but the compromise of going to the gym and having qualified staff supervising my workout enhances my performance. During the classes I was privileged to have teachers replying to my questions immediately, reformulating explanations if required, reviewing my code and motivating me to overcome my difficulties. I spent more than 8 hours a day with inspiring colleagues, with different backgrounds and objectives, with whom I built a solid support group. This was a meaningful experience I could never get from online tutorials. A bootcamp experience can be as efficient as formal corporate training Any company provides their employees the required training to work with their technologies. Sometimes these training programs work very well, but sometimes don’t. My first developer experience had an on-the-job training. The first months consisted in watching Udemy courses and having some classes to learn the project stack. I learned a lot trough both approaches, but the first revealed to be less efficient for me. While watching tutorials I could organise my schedule as I wanted but it was tiring, lonely and demotivating. The classes had a dynamic flow. After that learning period, I developed some projects with the other interns, who were as lost and confused on their first job as I was. Seniors always supported us, but it’s understandable their focus was client projects. Also, their explanations were not always clear for an entry role. And that’s ok, a good developer is not required to have teacher skills. Having education professionals only dedicated to my learning process was a completely different situation. Having some previous experience ended up being beneficial in that I didn’t have to deal with the frustrations of learning coding concepts for the first time and I was able to deeply understand them instead. Finding a full-time job is a full-time job itself “You don’t even need a degree to get a nice dev job” “If you do engineering school you’ll get hired before you finish”, “create a LinkedIn profile and you’ll have so many offers you’ll need to deny jobs”, “ you will make a lot of money right in the first job” are just some of the misconceptions about starting a tech career. I also had some romanticised ideas about this subject and was taken by surprise when I started applying and found out many companies don’t even reply and recruitment processes include very demanding technical interviews. I ended up not being admitted to the companies I most wanted to work for and actually struggled a bit to get my first job. Then I started to attend tech events and realised the importance of networking. In these events, I was able get in touch with people from startups, multinationals, entrepreneurs, etc, and often could get a follow-up. I was happy to find out the bootcamp takes this factor into consideration as well. Every bootcamp ends with an exclusive job fair, where recent-graduates have direct contact with several companies. My web dev class was also privileged to attend Landing Festival and to visit Volkswagen Digital Solutions hub. The importance of building a portfolio As a low experienced junior developer, I don’t have many projects to show my value to recruiters. In my first interviews I was frequently asked about college projects, my most relevant experience at the time. But the majority of them didn’t follow a TDD approach, neither a design pattern, some of them were stored on GitHub with block comments, console logs, no documentation and noticeable bugs. Moreover, my web apps were not deployed and my mobile apps were not available in the store. It’s hard to admit that my portfolio was mediocre but that’s the truth. After one year of experience, I had professional projects to add to my CV, but they are mostly products not publicly available. So the bootcamp was an opportunity to improve my personal portfolio. I took advantage to the lessons focused in good coding practices and from the pull request revisions made by the teachers to develop projects with better quality code. In conclusion Coding bootcamps are best known for successfully helping people with no prior experience to land developer roles. However, the benefits from joining an intensive coding course go beyond it. Bootcamps are specialised inteching modern technologies, mentoring students for the recruitment processes and creating a supportive environment that lasts when the bootcamp is over. Therefore, for someone like  me, who already has a tech career, the bootcamp is the perfect opportunity to level it up! About the author: Mariana Vargas is a full-stack developer and UX/UI enthusiast based in Lisbon, Portugal. She is an Ironhack web-dev alumna and was part of the teaching team in the first Ironhack’s B2B Bootcamp.

Hello! My name is Dioni Ugalde and I’m going to tell you about my experience as an Ironhack student, attending a web programming bootcamp for nine weeks. I decided to write a few lines about what this project has done for me because I think it can be very interesting and relatable for those of you thinking about signing up for a bootcamp. So, let’s go step by step! Before joining the bootcamp The first thing you need to know is that Ironhack provides you with everything you need to prepare for the program . Before the beginning of the course, there is an entrance exam to prepare you for it. After that, you have the pre-work - this took me about two months to complete, given the fact that my previous programming knowledge was zero. A week before the start of my Bootcamp, another course was ending, and with it came the “HackShow” - a great event where the best projects of the recent graduates are presented. I loved many of the presentations, but they seemed impossible to me as I thought to myself: “ how the hell was I going to make such a website in just nine weeks?” That thought, instead of backing me down, motivated me and I put in my mind, "Dioni, you have to have one of the best projects, the final project presentation of your course, whatever it may take." The remote, in-class Ironhack experience Due to the COVID-19 situation, the course had to take place remotely via Zoom. If you choose the remote bootcamp, you’ll have the same experience. However, because of this unusual situation, they offered us a week of testing: if we didn't like it remotely, we could drop it and wait for a new on-site version of the course. I knew I was going to miss the social contact with people, but still I recognized the great effort of Ironhack to make everything work perfectly. We learned to work in a remote environment, managing tools that we would not have used as much if we were in-person. On the second day at around five in the afternoon, the teachers sent us a bunch of problems meant to be solved for the next day, and I naively found myself asking the classic question from kindergarten: "How many do we have to do?" The professor answered straight away: "That depends on you, depends on the effort you want to put into it” I finished my “homework” around midnight and only then I started to understand what awaited me ahead. Going from project to project In the third week, we did the first project (individually), which is a video game. I like to push myself and so I tried to do something that was not so simple. I had to ask a lot of support from the assistant teachers Markus and Alfonso since what I wanted was a game that had several levels of difficulty, so it could get addictive. Several friends played it and found some shortcuts in the game, reaching the highest scores. On the day of the game’s presentation, my game was awarded the most playable and fun! This not only gave me a boost of encouragement, but also made me trigger my usual competitiveness. The next day, Saturday, I was already looking at what the second project would be like, and I thought carefully about who I would team up with to compete against Yosra, the girl who had won the best game. She is a true genius and she has already some years of experience programming in other languages. For me, being able to measure myself with her projects would prove a great challenge. The second module goes for three weeks - perhaps the craziest of the course - because we started to focus on making a website from scratch. Frustration began to show up in the class, and even some tears were seen on the other side of the Zoom cameras. There were days when I thought I didn’t understand anything. For the second project, my group - me, Manu, and Agustina - went with an idea by Agustina: a social network that was a recipe directory. We loved this idea, so we worked very hard for it. As usual, I wanted to keep a very high standard, even though it became a bit overwhelming. In the end, we achieve a good final product that we were proud of! Working on the final project: Console.log Ironhack For the last module, the difficulty was already enormous; even the most advanced of the students were beginning to struggle as the speed of the course was incredible. For the final project, I ended up working with my colleagues Tim and Nate. I was totally determined to have a great last project, so I based the concept of my idea directly on the most voted concepts of my teachers and other fellow students in my class. I thought about what are their needs and what would they like to see as a tool that could allow them to: Find a job after the Bootcamp; Show the projects they have done during the course; Have a directory with the links to the class notes. I was looking to surprise them, to see the "wooow" face in the audience in our presentation. Our project was a website where all class students could compile everything learned throughout the course, a page with their names, their projects, their contact details, and other useful information. This platform would also be very useful for future students because they could access this information to get inspired and see what can be done in terms of projects. Also, we wanted to add a section for notes and even a job-search engine. We got down to work, sketching the entire project in Photoshop first to have it visually. A great team makes all the difference It's time to talk about Tim and Nate. Tim was by far the one who controlled the programming the most - humble and very hard-working; with him everything was super easy. Nate started the course like me, with no background on programming, and the way he works is amazing - if there is a problem, he doesn't stop until he fixes it. I had thought through the idea well and I had a very clear concept in my head, with my marketing/business approach, focused on giving something to our classmates they really needed. Tim and Nate saw in me the capacity to see everything from that point of view and put in their great ability to develop, adapt, and materialize everything. That’s how we made a dream team. We started to work every day from 8.30 AM until 2:30 AM - we would sleep six hours and repeat. Usually, around midnight, we would simply work together on a single screen, solving complicated things together, in addition to making jokes non-stop like five-year-old children. I remember going to bed with a big smile on my face. Finally, the day came to showcase our final result - we had it very well prepared, everything measured in detail. Our presentation went great and we had our wow factor: we chose facial recognition to access the accounts, using machine learning (analyzing 127 points of our face). It is somewhat rather complicated, but we got it with the help of Markus and in the end, it worked wonderfully. The final result makes up for all the work When it was time to vote, there were three categories: project with the largest sales projection, the best design, and the best overall project. In the end, our project - Ironhack Console.log - ended up being awarded as the project with the highest possibility of acquisition and actually the best Ironhack project 2020. We exploded with joy! We had succeeded: three guys with no experience in programming websites had done it. It was definitely a great moment for the three of us. When you work for something that seems impossible, competing against programmers with great experience, in just nine weeks, to go so far... I will always thank Tim and Nate for trusting an unknown geek with crazy ideas like me. I am sure they will succeed in their professional lives! I'm glad they had fun with this too and I’m sure it’ll serve them in their careers. “I found it all an unforgettable experience.” For my part, I love the competition and doing new things, so I found it all an unforgettable experience. Ironhack has not only taught me the programming tools, but also how to take big problems and break them down into smaller ones, organizing and prioritizing each one of them. Their course helps you to be a tidier person, have clear steps of what you do, and make difficult things seem easy. I can totally recommend it. I think their work philosophy is very effective at teaching you how to manage yourself in a short time in a sector where there will be more work than ever before: all this and more makes them a great school. If you wish to see all of Berlin’s projects, just click here . And if you’d like to get in contact with me, I’d be happy to chat - [email protected] . Thank you!

My Love for Technology From the moment I realized that math was the language universe used to reveal itself, I knew I wanted to be a physicist. Physics had an elegant and enigmatic way of answering the questions I had as a child, but due to the lack of infrastructure and opportunities for scientists in Nepal, I was considering studying abroad. But my decision was presented by a stack of reasons why I shouldn't. So I did what any right-minded math enthusiast would do: join engineering. After getting into engineering school, it slowly transitioned into the love of technology. The boundless possibilities of technology mixed with the delights of making things that people would find helpful make technology an irresistible career path . The creative aspect of building things of your own design and putting your effort into is really rewarding; when you run your program and it actually begins to work as you had imagined, it's an incredibly gratifying experience in and of itself. Even with these perks, the question still remains, "Why do women who are in the STEM field still hesitate to take technology as their career path?" In my last two years of high school (grades 11 and 12), our class had more than 50% of the girls who wanted a career in the STEM field, but only 10% of the girls chose engineering as their career path. Women in Tech The gender gap in technology is not only the problem faced by a specific country but it i s a global issue. The main reason could be because there are not many role models to look up to for women. After all, women who are successful in the tech space are the ones who inspire other women to join. In my engineering class, we were 9 women out of 48 students which is progress considering the school's previous history, but there is still a huge gender gap. Therefore, I am fortunate enough to pursue my career in the field of technology where being a woman was not much of a hindrance. There is still an even greater problem that prevails in Nepal - illiteracy . While the city is engulfed with modernization, there are still parts of Nepal that do not have proper access to education. In rural parts of Nepal, the potential of many children is untouched because they have no means to gain knowledge. Knowledge is the stepping stone that opens a plethora of possibilities and knowing those children will never be able to know their potential is heart-breaking. I had just finished my Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering and "The Algorithm is Female" was the perfect place for me to implement my technical skills. So I entered "The Algorithm is Female" hackathon focusing on the situation of education in Nepal because the motive of the hackathon revolved around solving the major problems that Nepal is facing. Throughout the hackathon, I got to meet the most amazing women who shared the same interests and had amazing technical knowledge. Through the hackathon, I got to be a part of Ironhack's Web Development Bootcamp . So it began, 9 weeks of intensive learning. It was one of the best experiences of my life. The first thing that struck me about Ironhack was the diversity: people from all over the place gathered in Barcelona . I got to meet all these amazing people belonging to different backgrounds careerwise and got to hear their bold stories about why they wanted to start their career in the tech world. There were times when the course felt a bit overwhelming, but the support of the amazing teacher and the TAs who worked extra hours was always there to guide us through. I cannot emphasize enough how much I appreciate their patience. The main highlight of the Bootcamp has to be the final project that we get to do where we have to implement everything we had learned throughout the Bootcamp. I decided to build a project where people can easily apply for the Spanish visa online , also helping connect with people in Spain before their visit. I decided to address this problem which I had personally faced while applying for Spanish visa and I also wanted to connect with Nepalese who were already living in Spain. As a developer, you want to build a product that gets used by thousands of people helping them to achieve their goals. Hence, I aspire to become a developer at a company where they respect diversity and are working towards solving a complex technical challenge. As for my academic goals, as a machine learning enthusiast, I want to pursue a career in data science and machine learning to hone my technical skills. My personal goal would be to contribute to the educational sector in Nepal because as the city areas are developing, there are rural parts of Nepal where not a lot of children have access to education. I am so grateful that Ironhack and Hemper brought the initiative which helped me to experience this Bootcamp and was generous enough to provide me with the full scholarship and covering all other expenses. Also, thanks to Code Rush who made the hackathon possible in Nepal. I cannot express my gratitude enough to Spotahome who kindly sponsored my accommodation in Barcelona even in this time of crisis. Lastly, I appreciate all the other companies and individuals who have helped me experience Spain. I am eternally thankful to all.

My name is Marisa and I am an ex-student of Ironhack’s part-time course. Less relevant, but just as important to share, I’m also the Program Manager at Ironhack’s Miami campus . You see, one of the perks of working at Ironhack is that you get to take the courses for free. So, in January, I embarked on what I then thought would be my life-changing entrance into the world of code. As is probably obvious from the title, I didn’t last very long. These are things that everyone on the Ironhack team will tell you, but that no one likes to believe: The part-time course is HARD . The curriculum is by no means easy, but what’s really hard is that for 6 months, you spend two nights a week and all of your Saturday coding! This means no more Saturday beach trips with friends, or Tuesday happy hours at Blackbird (at least for the next 6 months) You have to do the homework . Seriously. The course alternates between lecture, pair programming exercises, and individual exercises. Most of the individual exercises are done at home. These assignments are your chance to find the gaps in your knowledge, review the material that challenged you, and perfect the skills you built in class. The course will give you what you give it. I’ll explain: In my class of 20 students, we had 3 instructors (1 lead and 2 TAs) and the constant support of Ironhack alumni and students. The people and the expertise are some of the biggest perks of taking an in-person course, and it pays to take advantage of them. Though I could cite a variety of factors that led me to dropping the course (I was distracted by moving into a new apartment, I had to miss class often to host Ironhack events, etc.), the reason I’m least likely to admit is this: I was not willing to put in the work. Though the part-time course is hard, I know now more than ever that if this is something you want and you’re willing to put in the work, it’s well worth it. I’ll put it in perspective: Since I dropped the part-time course, I’ve spent 2 Saturdays at the beach, and 4 Saturdays meticulously cleaning my apartment. In the meantime, my ex-classmates have learned to build out games like this . In another 3 months, I will have gone to the beach a few more times, and gone to a couple more happy hours. My ex-classmates will be building out things like an online wedding planner, the Uber for driveway parking, and an app to better monitor and control your mood (these are just a few examples of what past students have built). Beyond not being able to code my own web apps, I’ve also missed opportunities to manage new tech projects. Because learning to code isn’t just about becoming a software developer ; it’s about keeping up in this new world in which elementary school students are learning to code, and machines are replacing mundane human tasks. It’s about being a smarter entrepreneur and a better manager. (To learn more on this topic, read Ariel’s post in Entrepreneur Magazine .) Needless to say, I regret dropping the course. So, May 30th, I’ll return to the course with renewed commitment to learning to code, and this time, I’m going to give it my all. To read more student experiences from the part-time course, check out these testimonials here.

Elina Nenonen completed the most recent cohort of the Web Development Bootcamp in Barcelona and was one of the first students to be part of the new campus launch. Now that she’s back home in Finland, we spoke to her about her Ironhack experience and incredible final project. When and why did you decide to join Ironhack? I was working as a UX Designer, and started feeling that I would be able to do better and much more interactive work with designing if I could code at the same time. It would also be easier if I didn’t have to rely on others to implement what I’ve designed. I had been planning to learn web development for 3 years, but got nowhere with doing irregular online courses. One random day last October I decided it was the end of doing nothing about it, and started searching for bootcamps. I chose Ironhack because of its reviews and location, and applied to the March 2016 Web Development Bootcamp in Barcelona. What was the best of your bootcamp experience? In theory, I could have learned the same things online on my own, but I paid to be able to study with people who ended up being the best part about the whole experience. I needed people around to push me, to code with, to help me understand tricky concepts and to brainstorm ideas with. Besides being motivated by my peers, our teachers were extremely inspiring and engaging. They gave me lots of good ideas about next steps. For example, now that I’ve graduated from Ironhack, I’ve started playing playing with Arduino and to learn data visualisation with Javascript. The teaching assistants were also really important, it’s amazing to always have someone wiser than you available if you need help. Could you tell us a little bit about your web app? My website is called Waat, as people so many times are asking themselves “ Waat should I do with my life?” My aim is to provide information about what kinds of professions there are in different industries, and what people actually do in their jobs – and most importantly – how much they like what they’re doing. I also want to highlight what kinds of skills and tools are needed in each job. It could hopefully help students (or anyone) to make decisions about their future careers, and make them think about their future day-to-day jobs (instead of only university studies), and whether that’s a job they would actually enjoy doing. Now that you’ve graduated from Ironhack, would you recommend it to anyone? I would definitely recommend the Web Development Bootcamp to anyone who’s interested in full-stack development, especially if you’d like to land a job as a developer afterwards. However, I think it would be helpful for people who simply need better technical understanding in their job (or life in general), without necessarily wanting to become a developer. It’s also extremely useful for UX Designers, as there are too many designers out there who don’t know or care what HTML means. Understanding the data architecture is also essential for designers – it doesn’t make sense to design anything if you don’t know what’s feasible and what’s not. What kind of professional opportunities did you have after graduating from Ironhack? During and after the bootcamp I received several offers for start-up jobs and interviews in Barcelona, and got a new job at home in Finland (in a UX Design team where you can also design by coding). I was really surprised by the number of interesting start-ups I discovered during the bootcamp, and even felt like it might be nice to move to Barcelona at some point to work with one of them, even though that time isn’t right now. Any advice for the new generation of Ironhackers? Make coding as social as possible, problem solving with others is even more fun than on your own. Also, you’re not there to compete with anyone – by helping others and asking for help you learn so much more than by keeping your code to yourself. And if someone helps you, don’t just wait for them to find a solution – follow their approach to problem-solving, and learn how they debug. (There are plenty of debugging videos online too.) If working 12-14h/day doesn’t necessarily appeal to you, try to include different activities in your day. In the evenings when I was incapable of doing more coding, I started designing instead. And when I wasn’t able to do that anymore, I started watching online tutorials. It’s important to know that nobody will simply pour all the information into your head without you having to do anything – Bootcamp is hard work, but if you think it’s fun at the same time, web development is most likely your thing.

When and why did you decide to join Ironhack? After studying computer engineering and spending six years as an Account Manager, I decided I wanted to return to the world of programming but I needed some refreshment before doing so. I was trying to re-learn some things on my own, but it was too slow and I realized I needed some external help that would speed up the process. That’s when I started looking into bootcamps. The camps I looked at were really basic and short (70 hours max). After a lot of research, I thought maybe this format was my best option. But the options in Europe were pretty limited, and I only really found them in England and Spain. They were pretty much the same, except England’s bootcamps were longer and relatively more expensive, the currency change was also offsetting and London isn’t necessarily the most affordable place to live. In the end, I chose Ironhack in Barcelona. Can you tell us a fun story about your time at the bootcamp? I don’t know if I have any specific moment worth highlighting, but this bootcamp was one of the best experiences of my life. You meet amazing people from all kinds of backgrounds, not necessarily in programming, and many of them have the same doubts and fears as you, and that’s really rewarding. What was the biggest lesson you learned? The many hours you spend practicing throughout the camp is a lesson in itself. You’ll run into problems but you’ll learn how to face them and fix them a lot quicker than if you were on your own. The fact that you have the constant support of the instructors and you’re always around your classmates makes the whole journey a lot easier. What kind of opportunities have you had after Ironhack and where has your professional career gone? I was a freelancer before and I decided to continue freelancing afterwards, but I’ve definitely gotten many offers through LinkedIn since graduating. Going to Ironhack’s events have helped me meet people and make contacts who are really valuable when you’re working as a freelancer. What does “learning” mean to you? In this world, if you’re not up to date with the new technologies and frameworks, you will fall behind. You need to continue learning. It’s a perpetual process. What does “innovation” mean to you? Innovation is about creating, modifying, dreaming, being constantly moving and evolving and never stopping learning new things. Any advice for the new generation of Ironhackers? It’s not an easy task. I’d recommend: Become familiar with the basics on your own, whether it be through programming books, video tutorials, blogs, etc. Work hard and take advantage of having your instructors and classmates available to help you. Don’t despair, you’re going to be learning a lot of information in very little time, so don’t worry about other people learning faster than you. Remember that everyone’s got their own pace. Disconnect and relax on the weekends, but not for too long.

In August 2018, I was an Ironhack student. Prior to this, I’d done almost no coding. I'd tried to learn on my own but would always become stuck or unmotivated. In March 2018, I attended a WeCode workshop where I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. After the event and speaking to Ironhack staff/alumni, I applied for the course and was given access to the prework. I spent a lot of time doing the prework and online code challenge on codewars because I wanted to be prepared. I also attended two hackshow (where students who have just finished the bootcamp present their final projects) prior to starting the course to see what was possible. After both of the hackshows, I was so excited to start . It was incredible getting to see what students could build after nine weeks of coding. Ironhack Student I LOVED my time as a student; however, it was really tough and some days were more difficult than others. Knowing that everyone else in the class was going through the same thing and the fantastic teaching team really made it easier to keep going. During class, there would be a mixture of lessons and exercises; some exercises would be individual, but most exercises would be paired. For each paired exercise, students would be assigned to work with someone different which was beneficial: everyone at Ironhack has a different background and everyone has their own strengths. During the bootcamp, there were three projects. Project 1 is a browser based game created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; Project 2 is a full stack application (using Node.js); Project 3 is a full stack application using Node.js and React. As a student, Project 2 was my favorite project. I really enjoyed learning about the backend and how everything linked together; it was interesting to cover the basics of security, learning how data was stored and how to retrieve it. TAs at Ironhack One week after the bootcamp finished, I started as a TA  and imposter system was real. I wasn’t sure where to start helping and wasn’t confident I could explain course concepts. But after three cohorts, I’ve learned a lot and accepted that it’s okay not to know everything. Here are a few things I’ve learned as a TA: Everyone is able to code. It doesn’t matter what your background is or how old you are. If you’re willing to put the time and effort into coding, it’s possible. You don’t need a fancy computer and you can learn from home if you can’t commit to an in-person bootcamp . Building things is the best way to learn. Building something that you want to create is important because you’re more likely to go back to it. You’ll constantly be learning; this means you can constantly improve what you’re building. Don’t be afraid to break your code. Breaking your code is one of the best ways to learn and understand what is happing. Trial and error is an important part of knowing how to solve a problem Explaining a complicated concept in a simple way really helps you understand it Learning never stops . You’ll always need to look up how to solve a problem. There will always be things that you don’t understand and asking for help is encouraged. You have complete freedom over what you learn . If you’re interested in something specific, find some articles, build something to practice it, or attend events. Programming is a really broad field and you’re never going to know everything so take the time to pick what you’re truly interested in. Taking breaks is important. If you’re stuck and unable to solve a problem, taking a break from the computer can be really helpful. Coming back to it after 10 minutes with a clear mindset can really help. Use github to track your progress . You’ll be able to review the code that you’ve done previously to see how much you’ve improved and if you’re looking for a job, it will show employers what you’re capable of doing. You can even host a static site on github for free. Attending events is a cool way of getting to meet people who are working in the industry. You’ll meet people of all levels and can learn a lot from them. I’ve seen so many people go through the Ironhack bootcamp. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it. You get to meet some really cool people who all have different backgrounds and people you normally wouldn’t get to meet; you get to build up a support network from not only the people you learned with, but also with previous students and future students. There is no right or wrong way when when it comes to learning to code. It just takes time, effort, and dedication.