Seattle coding-school tuition to be covered by GI Bill

thats a good deal for the Kids that are interested in this area of expertise...

Weeelllll..........

I think they are OK as an introduction but would not rely on them totally for employment. Here is why, in most cases your resume first hits a non-Technical HR Recruiter and before they pass on your resume they are going to make a judgement on your college transcripts or education.......that's #1. #2 is that Computer Developer / Programming by itself might land you a position but that skill combined with a 4 year college degree in say Business Administration will definitely land you a position with higher pay. Employers today look at Programming as part of the skill package and they sometimes want a business degree as well. Yes MIS specialities are hired but in my view are not as valuable as someone that can code as well as understand the business side as well so that they can code an application. The secondary degree also gives you a competitive edge over H1b folks that you will be competing against that focus only on coding and are clueless about American Business.

As Military in transition, you have to be careful of fly by night or for profit degree mills. In a lot of cases some Universities and Community Colleges have kick ass IT programs. Have not been in the market for a while but SMU (Southern Methodist University) used to have a really good Oracle DBA program or JAVA Developer certification program. Local Community colleges (with HR department name recognition) also have and offer Micrsoft Programming courses in C Sharp, Visual Basic, etc. Some offer Linux, Sun Solaris UNIX system admin courses. If you want to learn how to code in Java.......you should learn basic Linux OS as well and see how that works. Without understanding Linux OS, your Java skills might be great but your version control and deployment of Java application skills are going to need a lot of work. Also learn Apache software tools, many of which you can download for free from the Internet.

One last item, say you don't have any money to spend on any of the above. Microsoft used to sell a self paced learning series in most IT Bookstores for learning C-Sharp, VBA, etc. Usually a book with a CD-ROM or a website download site for the Computer Based Training part. Very valuable if your still in the Army and it is how I learned Excel VBA macros, which is a nice skill to have and some companies integrate into the larger SalesForce or Peoplesoft applications.....which opens the door for you to poke your nose in them and learn parts of them. Make sure the learning book version of Excel of the book matches the Excel version on your laptop, if your planning to learn VBA or you will get frustrated. Good Luck!

I have several friends in the programming field, and they all say the same thing. Stay away from colleges or bootcamps when it comes to programming. And people who go that route generally become better programmers. You tend to miss something important when you are being force fed a language of any kind, and you focus too much on the commands that are given rather than syntax, style, and Logic behind the code.