Justin Horn could usually breeze through most university coursework, but on a late Spring afternoon of 2019, an unanswered question had hijacked his brain and put every thought process on hold. An aspiring young programmer and entrepreneur, he had signed up for the TU Braunschweig\u2019s bachelor in computer science less than half a year prior, but now his motivation was flagging. He stood from his computer, went out to get some food, and found himself in the street hearing the same question whispered in his mind\u2019s ear again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy do you keep doing this? You hate<\/em> this!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, it was not programming itself that he disliked. He\u2019d started designing and completing small tech projects on his PC four years before he got into university. Rather, the problem was that his academic curriculum seemed palpably out of line with his aspirations. \u201cWhat I was learning wasn\u2019t helping me become a developer,\u201d he says in retrospect. \u201cThere was a lot of maths, a lot of theory, a lot of science \u2013 but not enough actual, hands-on coding. I was getting good grades, sure, but they simply didn\u2019t feel meaningful to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As someone with dreams to create his own projects and found a start-up, he was no less dissatisfied with the university\u2019s environment. \u201cLook, I\u2019m a very competitive guy. I have high expectations for myself and want to do things the right way. But at Uni you don\u2019t reason in terms of ideals, you reason in terms of exams<\/em>. I kept getting this vibe, like it was all about putting in the minimum effort to pass an exam, and not about really learning something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not fond of the idea of sleeping his way to the top, Justin dropped out of university and tried his hand as an indie hacker \u2013 only to find that doing code alone meant doing code the hard way. He tried building and selling his own products, but he found limited success. \u201cI was working, yes. But without getting any feedback, it was like working in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only then did he take the next step in his career \u2013 to complete his education, but without returning to university: Justin Horn was going to join a coding bootcamp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n