I noticed that there was a very friendly atmosphere between the students, the staff and the teachers at Le Wagon Istanbul.
I was a little excited when I joined Le Wagon because I was coming from Germany. At the time, I had questions on my mind such as; is it worth it to for me and is this a risky decision and so on. But after a while, I noticed that there was a very friendly atmosphere between the students, the staff and the teachers at Le Wagon Istanbul. I never felt alienated, so Le Wagon was a very positive experience for me and I am happy with how it met my expectations.
I wasn't always interested in technology. Instead, I was interested in games when I was a kid. However, a few years ago, I was working as a technical consultant in Greece and there were situations where we were solving technical problems for customers and sometimes we transferred complex problems to senior engineers. Logs and coding related data were being collected by those engineers. Through cooperating with senior engineers, I noticed that we were building products with code and I wanted to start building a product rather than simply giving technical support. That was the turning point in my decision to start coding.
People at Le Wagon really take responsibility and love to help
I really miss coding at the Bootcamp from 9 am to 6pm. I felt like going to the Bootcamp was similar to my previous routine, when I used to go to work. Now I'm trying to practice from home as much as I can, but it's not the same as the time when I was a student at Le Wagon. The thing I miss the most is the discipline we had, and the teachers were very helpful to sustain that discipline. The campus atmosphere was very nice, we used to gather every Friday to relax and have a small party with the teachers and the staff.
How Le Wagon teaches you new things is very enjoyable, the lessons were intensive, and when I had a hard time understanding a problem or a task, no questions remained unanswered. Besides that, Le Wagon is a very responsible organization. For example, I wanted to join Le Wagon Germany’s “Career Week”. When I told the staff in Istanbul about this they arranged it very quickly. That’s just one example of how the people at Le Wagon take responsibility and love to help. Le Wagon’s Global alumni network is really useful too. I was looking at job offers on Linkedin, and I saw that some of the graduates were working for those companies. I have sent them connection request and we have started talking and through them I was able to get useful information, advice and further insights.
Le Wagon’s buddy system has prepared us for a real work environment
We were very busy during the “Projects Weeks”, when we built an awesome application from scratch. It was so intense that we had to write code at home, even in the evenings, in order to complete the project. We built a product that we liked, and we started to improve it by thinking how it can be better and by adding new features to it. This was great fun! Although I did not lead the team during the project week, when the team leader gave us tasks, we continued to exchanged ideas and worked together really well to solve that task. We learned how teamwork works! When you get a job, you will not take a solo role, you will be working with a team and Le Wagon’s buddy system has prepared us for a real work environment.
Ruby is one of the most ideal languages to learn for beginners
When you look at coding at first glance, it feels like it is not a part of your life in any way. You think about coding as if it’s something you do in front of a computer all day, but in fact, if you really think about it, real life also consists of the equations we use whilst coding, such as if, else and while. Therefore, Ruby is one of the ideal languages to learn for beginners. I like the syntax and it is easier to understand. I found that everything we learned in the curriculum is also necessary and relevant for our future jobs in tech. When I was looking at a job application, I realized that I had most of the skills required. That is why I found the curriculum useful. Also, during “Career Week” – when Le Wagon Istanbul prepared us for our future jobs - we had some very interesting speakers attend. It was very nice to learn about how job interviews are being done and to learn from other professional experiences.
Now that I am a graduate, I want to get a job or maybe find an intern position where I can develop my skills and start coding, so I can continue to build neat products!
