
Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code – But Can’t - mathgenius
https://backchannel.com/thousands-of-veterans-want-to-learn-to-code-but-cant-7ed60c167a61
======
MrZongle2
FTA: "“I could not use my GI Bill to go to code school. That was the number
one roadblock,” Molina says."

As a veteran who learned to code in my spare time, landed a tech job without a
degree and had the older, pre-9/11 GI Bill to help pay for an education, I'm
rather skeptical. In fact, I'd say that the core problem isn't the GI Bill,
but rather this passage, later in the article:

 _" But after he left the army in 2013, Molina and his family moved back to
his native Oregon. As he weighed his options, he decided that a code school
was his best bet to keep learning. He needed an immersive program, but on a
faster timeline than college could offer — he had a wife and three daughters
to support."_

If you have dependents to support, _why did you get out of the military
without a contingency plan?_ Unless the discharge is unexpected (for medical
or disciplinary reasons), one's enlistment period is pretty well-defined.

I got out when I was 24. Within a year I had secured a full-time, well-paying
field tech support job based upon what I had learned while in the Army.

If you're _39_ and haven't taken advantage of the myriad of educational
opportunities in the U.S. military to ensure that you're hire-able in the
private sector, that's nobody's fault but yours.

If there are additional circumstances that prevented Mr. Molina from making
that happen, the article failed to cover them.

