I was part of the USAF Palace Acquire Program. It is a civilian program that pays a salary and expenses to pursue graduate work. Overall, I was happy with my experience. There are exceptions, but I discovered that most "real work" (i.e. new technology, development) is done by contractors. The AF personel are mostly program managers or budget managers.
These are the pros and cons of my experience
Pros
Don't have to be a poor graduate student
Because you're being paid, you can concentrate on your studies/research and don't have to teach classes or work for a professor
Lots of freedom and responsiblity -- my group was incredibly under staffed
The AF typically has boat-loads of money to spend on technology and training
You're serving your country
Job security
Slow pace
Cons
Low salaries compared to the industry
Bureaucracy
Because of a 12 year hiring freeze, your coworkers may not be well educated on the latest advances in technology
Because of job security, your coworkers may be apathetic
Recently, I've investigated using Java, specifically Java Server Pages and Java Servlets, to develop web applications. I found some important benefits to using Java rather than Perl. They are as follows...
Pros: 1 - Java is object oriented, Perl is not (although this is debatable). From a developer's view, the lack of OO features in Perl made the development cumbersome and less than elegant. By using OO, the code and application should be more versatile. I also think the OO features make Java much easier to maintain than Perl.
2 - By mixing JSP and Servlets one can use the Model-View-Controller pattern. (As far as I know there is no way to do this with Perl or PHP.) This is a great way to develop web applications because it allows you to separate the presentation of your data with the logic that processes your data. If you look at some of the perl pages, they are a huge pain to read because of all the HTML mixed with the code. This means that a graphic artist could develop the "look" of the web page, and a software engineer could add a few lines of code to insert the data rather than doing all the programming and presentation in the same perl page. This will allow for concurrent development of the presentation and the logic.
3 - Maybe the biggest benefit is that JSP and Servlets are platform independent. This is a quote from one JSP/Servlet developer: "All of these packages are Open Source and Pure Java and should run in any JSDK 2.0 or higher servlet engine and on any platform that the engine supports. Without *any* code changes. How cool is that?;-) "
Cons: 1 - The Apache JServ engine seems to be pretty fast, but a good JSP engine costs $$. The performance issues can be can be overcome with a native compiler.
you may check with a local bank if you're near a military town. i know of several banks that are developing online-banking solutions that target military personnel b/c of their mobility.
banks are very happy if they can keep a customer when they move every 2-3 years, including overseas deployments. and staying with one financial institution makes my life much easier.
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These are the pros and cons of my experience
Pros
- Don't have to be a poor graduate student
- Because you're being paid, you can concentrate on your studies/research and don't have to teach classes or work for a professor
- Lots of freedom and responsiblity -- my group was incredibly under staffed
- The AF typically has boat-loads of money to spend on technology and training
- You're serving your country
- Job security
- Slow pace
ConsRecently, I've investigated using Java, specifically Java Server Pages and Java Servlets, to develop web applications. I found some important benefits to using Java rather than Perl. They are as follows...
Pros:
1 - Java is object oriented, Perl is not (although this is debatable). From a developer's view, the lack of OO features in Perl made the development cumbersome and less than elegant. By using OO, the code and application should be more versatile. I also think the OO features make Java much easier to maintain than Perl.
2 - By mixing JSP and Servlets one can use the Model-View-Controller pattern. (As far as I know there is no way to do this with Perl or PHP.) This is a great way to develop web applications because it allows you to separate the presentation of your data with the logic that processes your data. If you look at some of the perl pages, they are a huge pain to read because of all the HTML mixed with the code. This means that a graphic artist could develop the "look" of the web page, and a software engineer could add a few lines of code to insert the data rather than doing all the programming and presentation in the same perl page. This will allow for concurrent development of the presentation and the logic.
3 - Maybe the biggest benefit is that JSP and Servlets are platform independent. This is a quote from one JSP/Servlet developer: "All of these packages are Open Source and Pure Java and should run in any JSDK 2.0 or higher servlet engine and on any platform that the engine supports. Without *any* code changes. How cool is that?
Cons:
1 - The Apache JServ engine seems to be pretty fast, but a good JSP engine costs $$. The performance issues can be can be overcome with a native compiler.
you may check with a local bank if you're near a military town. i know of several banks that are developing online-banking solutions that target military personnel b/c of their mobility.
banks are very happy if they can keep a customer when they move every 2-3 years, including overseas deployments. and staying with one financial institution makes my life much easier.
21, is that all? join the NTBugTraq list and you'll hear about much more than 21 patches!!