>>12814754Full-time programmer here. If you're going to learn programming, buy an O'Riley book or take a class at community college. You'll pick up much more than if you just attended a bootcamp.
Bootcamps are obscenely expensive, and they're more focused on fluffing your CV than actually teaching. The students scratch the surface of 10 different topics, without learning enough to be good at their jobs. They then stick all 10 topics on their resume, and HR hires them because Stacy saw the right buzzwords.
The end result is that thousands of idiots overpay to become dunning-kruger retards, then get into industry and shit everything up. They don't have the technical depth to do their jobs.
After a year or two, every bootcamper I knew either quit programming altogether or got fired for incompetence. But plenty of self-taught people who studied from books have been in the field for decades.
The most important thing to know about programming is that there's more than one way to accomplish every task. Learn several approaches, and choose the best fit for a given scenario. This is the benefit of a book or a college course. A bootcamp will only show you one method, and teach you to apply it blindly to every problem.
That said, definitely go to community college instead of into the military. If you regret your choice later, you can always enlist, and a degree will get you a comfier post.
