rouxcaesar

My Thoughts on Bradfield

I've been asked by several people over time about my experience with the classes offered by Bradfield, and thought that I should save some future keystrokes by writing up a short gist for future reference. Hopefully this gist will be useful for others who are considering Bradfield and wondering it is worth it. My intended audience is primarily Launch School students who have completed the Core program and likely also Capstone, but the majority of this gist will be applicable to anyone who is a working/experienced software engineer.

Since late 2019, I've taken 4 short courses from the Bradfield School of Computer Science and in 2021 I enrolled in their Computer Science Intensive (CSI) program¹. Overall, I've found the courses and CSI to be an excellent opportunity to grown my technical skills and broaden my knowledge of CS topics.

The courses I completed were:

• Computer Architecture: The Hardware/Software Interface

rouxcaesar

Advice for Capstone students

Here is a list of pieces of advice that I've given students entering the Capstone program of Launch School. The focus of this list is for the learning and project portions of the program, nothing job related (could be added later). It's based on my own experience going through Capstone and having observed other students go through the program. Not every piece of advice may apply to you, but I hope that at least some of it will be helpful.

Congrats on completing the Core Curriculum and getting accepted into Capstone and best of luck on your next journey!

• Be prepared for a big shift in how you learn. While Core was mastery-based learning, Capstone and your future jobs will be just-in-time (JIT) learning. You will feel like you're drinking from a firehose of information and feel the urge to study some topics repeatedly, but I urge you to "timebox" your learning (dedicate some time to a topic and then move on). You will have the chance to circle back to any topics in Capstone d