What is the best part of the military for a programmer?

Question

I'm not sure if this is completely off topic but I was wondering what the best part of the military would be best for a computer programmer? (i.e Army, Navy, Airforce, etc.).

I'm not interested in cryptography or anything like that but I would like to join. Any of your tips/opinions would be great.

The reason I'm thinking of joining the military is because they will allow me to go to school while I'm in service and will pay for it.

Does the military only use low level languages like C/C++ or would a C#/ASP.NET developer like myself still have a place?

Answer 1

Intelligence would probably be a good fit, but it may take you a while to get there. Joel will likely have a better idea, though, considering he's gone through the army.

Some employers will pay for an education as well, if you're good enough. The military is not necessarily your only option. Ask around, and look up employers who have been ranked as top employers in your area, it may be one of their standard benefits.

Answer 2

From my familiarity with faculty at CMU, it seems like there are a lot of air force people who do advanced software engineering, but most of their experience is low-level and embedded.

The military also does a lot of logistics work in higher-level languages, but it seems that much of this is outsourced to companies in the DC/VA/MD area.

If you are not currently in the army, you may want to consider working for one of those companies. You may need to obtain clearance before you apply.

The DoD also sponsors a lot of academic research (primarily via Darpa), and many schools have huge projects (e.g., the self-navigating vehicles) that involve a lot of engineering with military applications.

If you are set to go with the army, I guess you should try and find out if they can guarantee you a programming job, or whether instead of throwing and catching exceptions you'll be throwing grenades and catching bullets. In my home country you usually know where you go before you enlist, not sure about laws in the US.

Answer 3

The best part of the military for a programmer is DARPA. You generally get there by not joining and working on advanced research projects on your own while publishing papers until somebody notices your work could be very useful to the military.

At least that's what I've heard -- I've been in the military, but not DARPA.

Answer 4

I was a programmer before I joined the Army, and after. The best I can offer is that, yes you do get good money for education, but it completely changes your perspective on life. I spent some time "over there" and it helped me tremendously on understanding what is important and being able to prioritize. Plus there is kind of a "good old boys" club when it comes to any military experience. I know that if I interview two candidates who are otherwise equally qualified, I'm choosing the ex-military (or ex-Eagle Scout) over the other.

For the record, I was a mechanic. It's not a bad job, you get to think, and it's very different from programming so you have to think in physical ways.

Answer 5

Depends. What country?

Answer 6

Check out the schools and specialities that each force supports. My experience (a few years out of date) was that the Air Force offered more opportunity for heads down programmers than the Navy as the later was phasing out many of its programmer related fields in favour of civilian contractors. Don't take my word for it however.. politics and military policy change often. I personally lucked out and ended up in the Navy at a command that was just getting into web technology. It paid to be the young geek on hand when a coding position came up. ;-)

Answer 7

The outside of it.

Answer 8

You've got a lot of great answers here, but to addres your question on languages:

Much military software is written using Ada. It's a high level, object oriented language like c,c++, and c# similar in structure to Pascal. It's used for mission critical systems, like missile guidance and navigation.

Of course the military still needs web pages and databases and training simulation videogames which would all be done in more appropriate technologies like C#.

Hope this helps.