Code Platoon is committed to supporting Veterans, Servicemembers, and military families as they transition into tech careers. Over the past year, we’ve seen a slight dip in our six-month and one-year employment rates. Still, our graduates continue to leverage their skills and resilience to secure software engineering roles with a median starting salary of $80,000.

Our graduates’ continued success speaks volumes about the strength of our approach.  Our flexible learning options and dedicated support have helped Veterans and their families transition smoothly into new careers.

“Code Platoon continues to be the go-to path for Veterans and military spouses to break into tech,” Rod Levy, Executive Director of Code Platoon, says. “We’re always evolving our curriculum and career services to keep pace with the ever-changing tech landscape, ensuring our graduates are ready to hit the ground running.”

Code Platoon Graduate Outcomes 2024

• In 2024, 61% of Code Platoon graduates secured jobs in tech within six months of completing the program, with a median starting salary of $80,000. 
• One year after graduation, that placement rate increases to 72%
• The median salary jumps to $102,000 after two years in the industry. 
• Code Platoon continues to be recognized as a top coding bootcamp by Course Report and SwitchUp. This year, we also earned new designations as the #1 Best Coding Bootcamp of 2024 by College Consensus and a Military Friendly School by VIQTORY.

In-Demand Skills Employers Seek

Code Platoon graduates excel in tech because they master the skills employers demand. Our Full-Stack Software Engineering curriculum covers essential programming languages like Python and JavaScript, along with popular tools such as Docker, React, and PostgreSQL. This year, we added artificial intelligence training to our core curriculum, equipping students with one of the hottest skills in software engineering today. Our specialized DevOps and Cloud Engineering training also dives into continuous integration, configuration management, and automation—ensuring graduates can make an immediate impact in their new roles.

“In my seven years of tech experience, practical knowledge is the biggest asset. Nobody I’ve worked with has treated me differently because I don’t have a degree.” James, an Army National Guard Veteran and Technical Team Lead at Procore Technologies says.

Navigating the Job Market with Confidence

While the tech industry has seen shifts and challenges, Code Platoon graduates continue to stand out because of their unique combination of in-demand technical skills and lived experience from their military backgrounds, including discipline, leadership, and problem-solving. This combination continues to make them highly sought after by our corporate and hiring partners, including Caesars Digital, Travelers Insurance, and Cecilian Partners.

As the tech landscape evolves, our comprehensive Career Services help graduates take on the job search with a clear strategy and well-prepared materials. Our dedicated Career Services team provides personalized support, including 1-on-1 mentorship, resume workshops, LinkedIn optimization, and mock interviews, preparing our graduates to present their military-to-tech transition stories to future employers.

“Code Platoon prepared me for the job market better than a degree,” Megan, a Navy Veteran and Software Engineer at DRW, says. “The program gave me a good sense of communication skills and how to explain my work experience.” 

Companies that Hire Code Platoon Grads

At Code Platoon, the culmination of our Full-Stack Software Engineering: Evening & Weekend program is nothing short of spectacular. Our Veteran and military spouse graduates spend 28 rigorous weeks mastering coding, and their final projects are a testament to their hard work, creativity, technical skills, and real-world problem-solving developed during coding bootcamp. We are thrilled to highlight the projects our graduates programmed and deployed during their three-week final project sprint. Let’s dive into their full-stack creations.

Reputable Restrooms: Find and Review Public Restrooms

Reputable Restrooms is an application designed to help users find the cleanest, closest, and best-reviewed restrooms based on their location. Users can view restroom location pins, read and submit reviews, and see average ratings all laid out on a clean map UI built with Google Maps API.

Although the team was more versed in JavaScript from the Evening & Weekend program, they elected to challenge themselves by using TypeScript on the front end of their final project: “We decided to use TypeScript because it’s versatile and gave Reputable Restrooms a modern touch. After we put things together, we were able to use HTML and CSS for the page’s styling easily. In the long run, I think it saved us a lot of time,” Charles, a Navy Reservist and member of the Reputable Restrooms team, says. 

The project also leveraged React and Bootstrap on the front end, and Python and Django on the back end. The development team comprised two Army Veterans and a Marine Corps Veteran alongside Charles.

Trek Tracker: A Guide to National Parks

Trek Tracker is the next project in the showcase. It was developed by two Army Veterans, an Air Force Veteran, a Marine Corps Veteran, and a military spouse.

“Our motivation for this project was to promote discovery of national parks, educate people, and create lasting memories for friends and family,” Raymond, a Marine Corps Veteran, says. “In the future, we want to implement a way for Trek Tracker users to plan and share trips with family and friends in the application.”

Trek Tracker provides information for visiting national parks in the United States, including available activities and customized weather and news alerts for each location. Users can log their past visits, plan future trips, and even keep a diary of their experiences. Trek Tracker uses the National Parks Service API, the National Weather Service API, and the graduates’ in-house API to create and save park reviews to their PostGreSQL database.

Evently: Event and Guest Management App

The final project demonstrated during the Foxtrot Evening & Weekend Platoon graduation is Evently. Evently simplifies event planning and guest management while sending automatic email notifications via Django’s STMP capabilities. The app also features an event calendar and event windows with details, guest lists, and location maps, enhancing the overall user experience.

Dylan, an Army Veteran, reflects on his learning experience while creating Evently: “When developing our front end with React Material UI, we found that it was easy to box ourselves in, especially when working with its reusable components. If we were starting from scratch again, we should’ve considered scalability earlier.”

“I don’t know if we would have finished had we not deployed early and often. Learning how to set up and configure Terraform was my biggest challenge, but it made it much easier to test,” Matt, an Army Veteran, said.

The rest of the Evently team comprised of an Army Reservist and a Navy Reservist.

Celebrating Success and Looking Forward

Our graduates’ dedication to learning and ingenuity are truly inspiring. As they enter the tech industry, we’re confident they will continue to code and contribute to the future of the tech industry. Congratulations to our Foxtrot Evening & Weekend Platoon graduates on their significant accomplishments!

Are you ready to jumpstart your tech career in 2024? At Code Platoon, we ensure that our military coding students are trained in programming languages and technologies, offering both high salaries and high demand from employers. This article reflects our findings on the best-paying and highest-demand programming languages and software development tools for 2024. Whether you’re aiming for a career in full-stack software engineering or DevOps and cloud engineering, we hope these insights will help you make an informed decision.

The Top Programming Languages in 2024

Our research shows that Python and JavaScript developers continue to be in demand in 2024. These two languages are core to Code Platoon’s curriculum, ensuring our graduates are well-prepared for the job market.

• Python continues to be an essential language in the tech industry, ranking #2 in job postings and #1 in average salary. As a general-purpose language, Python is used in a wide range of domains, including back-end web development, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and automation.
• JavaScript also maintains a strong presence, ranking #3 in job postings and #4 in average salary for the second year in a row. JavaScript is the only programming language that can run natively in all web browsers, making it essential for web development.
• C# climbs to #1 in job postings but falls to #3 in average salary compared to 2023. This language continues to be popular due to its strong integration with Microsoft products and the Unity gaming engine.

Programming Languages in 2024 Ranked by Job Openings and Average Salary

1. C#: Dominating the gaming industry and Windows applications but difficult to learn.
2. Python: Essential for data science, AI, machine learning, cybersecurity, and DevOps engineering.
3. JavaScript: The backbone of web application development.
4. C++: Ideal for high-performance applications, but like C# more challenging to learn than Python.
5. Java: Integral to business applications.
6. SQL: Essential for database management.
7. PHP: Maintaining relevance in web development.
8. C: Powerful, flexible, and widely used in operating systems.

Best Software Development Tools in 2024

In addition to programming languages, several key technologies are shaping the software engineering industry in 2024:

• Database Environments: PostgreSQL is the most popular database management system among professional developers for the second year in a row. This open-source database is known for its robustness and support for complex queries and transactions.
• Web Frameworks: React is the most used web framework by professional developers. It’s favored for its efficiency and flexibility in building user interfaces.
• Cloud Platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the dominant cloud platform. However, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have both grown in adoption.
• Containerization: Docker is the most popular tool for compiling, building, and testing applications, cementing its importance in modern DevOps practices.
• Artificial Intelligence: AI tools have surged in industry adoption; 62% of software developers incorporate AI into their workflows. Despite the rapid growth in AI’s adoption, most professional developers (70%) view AI not as a threat to their jobs but as a tool to enhance their work.

What to Learn for Software Engineering in 2024

Understanding the top programming languages and technologies is crucial for navigating the tech industry. At Code Platoon, Python and JavaScript remain pivotal in our curriculum, ensuring that graduates are well-prepared for the demands of today’s job market. Additionally, familiarity with technologies like PostgreSQL, AI tools, and Docker further enhances our graduates’ career prospects.

Ready to dive into these in-demand skills? Apply now to join our next cohort and position yourself for success in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

For more insights and detailed industry trends, check out the latest reports from Stack Overflow and the TIOBE Index.

Rod Levy is the Founder and Executive Director of Code Platoon. He holds undergraduate and Master’s degrees in engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he graduated with honors. Rod has completed Dev Bootcamp’s web developer program.

A common question we receive here at Code Platoon is a variation of “Should I go to Code Platoon, or get a degree in computer science at a university?”

This is of course a valid question when attempting to decide your future. But instead of simply comparing the raw numbers, I want to offer a few thoughts that will act as a way to compare this serious choice. 

To start with a popular phrase and apply it to this context, all coding bootcamps and colleges are not created equally. While this may seem obvious, we often forget to account for some of the variables when comparing. 

For example, we can’t simply ask whether any coding bootcamp is better or worse than any college – that’s immediately problematic from an analytical perspective. It would be better to start, at the very least, with a question like “Which is better, the best coding bootcamp, or the best college program?”

That starts to level the playing field, but only a bit; it doesn’t account for several other factors. For example, is the best college accessible to us? 

To use a personal example, I completed an MA in history a few years ago. When looking at potential schools, Harvard was considered the top choice by many, but that mattered very little from the practical cost perspective.

So, the practical must always factor in: “What is the best program that is accessible?”

And yet we can still further refine that. Let’s imagine that a highly-ranked college and a highly-ranked coding bootcamp are both accessible, and let’s suppose that the college has an edge in its graduate outcomes. That means it’s the smarter choice, right?

Not necessarily. First, when does the college program start, and second, how long does it take?

If we keep things equal in our hypothetical and say that they start at the same time, a coding bootcamp is much shorter in length by at least a few years. That has to be accounted for when doing a comparative analysis.

To put a fine point on it and contextualize the numbers, let’s suppose that a computer science degree holder from a good school lands a starting salary of $90,000/year, and the coding school graduate gets an offer of $80,000/year to begin a new role. While the CS degree path seems more profitable, it’s not that simple.

If a coding bootcamp takes 4-6 months and a degree takes 3.5-4 years, the coding bootcamp grad is earning that salary at least three years sooner than the college student who is still in school. By the time the college student graduates, they are roughly $210,000 behind in their earnings.

How does that look over a lifetime of earnings? How does it translate into further career development? Will one put us in more debt than the other? 

All of these are valuable and relevant questions, and it’s worth noting that even my hypothetical comparison can be altered based on numerous factors. The point is not to come up with a direct answer, but rather to offer a more robust method of comparison that goes beyond simply asking which one is better.

The short answer is, it depends. The longer answer is that it depends on a lot of factors, some of which are neglected and not taken into account, often because we don’t consider relevant qualifiers that offer a solid foundation for comparing. 

What is your current situation? How much time can you devote to training? What are the practical options based on these factors?

Be sure you are taking into account what matters to you, as no one knows your situation better than you. We are here to help you walk through those options and make the smartest, most informed choice possible. 

Greg Drobny is a former Airborne Infantryman, PSYOP Team Chief, political consultant, professional military blogger, and Code Platoon’s Student Outreach and Recruitment Manager. He holds a BA and MA in history and an MS in organizational psychology. He is married with four children who keep him more than slightly busy, and he is passionate about helping Veterans find their paths in life and develop the skills needed to pursue their goals.

For 15 weeks, the Whiskey Platoon graduates dedicated themselves to honing their coding skills during the Full-stack Software Engineering: Immersive program. From AI-driven chess tutors to comprehensive class management tools and real-time chat apps, their final group projects reflect their dedication and growth. Join us in this blog as we explore and celebrate their remarkable accomplishments. 

Starting the project showcase strong, Cheap Chess Tutor leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help chess players improve their skills. New players can see suggested moves during real-time games with other players or computers. The app stores its data on a PostgreSQL database, so users can play multiple games simultaneously.

OpenAI powers the computer opponent. The team’s code translates the chessboard into text for ChatGPT 3.5 to analyze, then converts its responses back into JavaScript code, creating interactive visual effects for the user within a second.

“For many of us, this was the first time we had taken somebody else’s code and contributed enough to call it our own,” Drew, an active duty Airman, says. “It required a strong understanding of the code, which we gained through demos, reviews, and most of all, not being afraid to ask questions. Cheap Chess Tutor taught us the versatility needed to jump into any project and thrive.”

ChangeMate platforms social impact events and campaigns in a fun, social layout. The app offers organizers tools to promote their events, recruit volunteers, and assign tasks on a user interface created with React and Veet and enhanced using Bootstrap components. 

Individual users are motivated to host, volunteer for, and attend events for social causes by earning badges and recognition from the ChangeMate app. Part of the user functionality uses external and Restful APIs.

“Our vision was for ChangeMate to be more than just a social media platform,” Shawn, an Air Force Veteran and member of the ChangeMate team, says. “ChangeMate is a catalyst for positive change, bringing communities together to create a better world. We’re excited to embark on this journey with our users.”

The next team built Platoon Console, a class management tool for Code Platoon students and instructors. For students, the app streamlines their attendance records, manages pair programming, and provides a detailed class calendar and resources, including a searchable gallery of lecture videos. 

“We knew what students need from our own experience,” Landon, a Navy Veteran, says. “We frequently met with our instructors to define the scope of the classroom toolset and what information they need to collect on the platform.”

Based on their user research, the team designed the instructor side of the platform to check and approve attendance, which is stored on a back-end table of attendance records stored in SQL. Instructors can also select students to demo their code and generate random pairs or groups for assignments.

Transparent Budget Decisions (TBD) is a personalized finance app that tracks expenses and forecasts monthly expenses. Before writing any code, the team used Agile methods to determine their project scope.

“We created a whiteboard of potential features and categorized them based on our vision of the minimum viable product,” Weston, a Marine Corps Veteran who worked on TBD, says, “Each feature was broken down into a user story to determine its success criteria from that user’s perspective.”

TBD features an interactive calendar of transaction data and events, graphs the remaining budget using JavaScript against automatically deducted monthly transactions, and uses the Open AI API in the “Ask TBD” page, where users can receive instant answers from ChatGPT.

The last project in our showcase is Disclone, a full-stack chat application designed to provide users with a seamless communication experience. Users can join different channels or create their own. While on a channel, their messages are sent in real-time to other users via a WebSocket server built with Django and a Gunicorn server. The team deployed Disclone on an Amazon EC2 instance, packaged with a lightweight Docker container.

“Rather than focusing solely on creating a feature-rich application with what we already knew, our team saw Disclone as an opportunity to push the boundaries of our skills,” Jordan, an Air Force Veteran and Disclone developer, says. “We challenged ourselves by incorporating cutting-edge technologies we were eager to learn. These technologies not only enhance Disclone’s performance but also represent a significant milestone in our learning journeys.”