Comment by AYBABTME | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AYBABTME | Hacker News Reader

In 2009-2010, I was an infantry officer working in Kandahar (Afghanistan) Airfield's brigade HQ; a canadian HQ then. My job was to receive all the reports from the ground and fan that info out thorough the HQ and our higher ups/sides.

The HQ was processing things like medical evacuations, support fire missions, contact reports. The way it was done was very inefficient, frustratingly so. For instance, a medical mission would go like this.

A unit would report an IED strike with critical injuries. The unit would pass a MEDEVAC request by radio to their company -> batalion -> brigade HQ (us). We would then be the dispatch center for the helicopters and synchronization of airspace and hospital and all.

When the request would come in, it would typically be ~30s to 1m after the actual strike. I would yell at an airman that would get up his chair, walk to the center map and with his rule, measure the distance in miles between the hospital landing pad and the strike. He would then compute ETAs and for the helicopters based on various parameters. He would then ask the helicopter HQ to send a chopper on site. He would then slowly type a message in a proformat, post that in the channel. That's ~5m later.

When I was there, I've picked up VBA (VB for Applications), the macro system behind Excel. I didn't even know what a programming language was back then.

This 5min latency in sending the request to choppers, and giving back ETD/ETA info to the unit on the ground would result in people dying off their wounds, or staying in dangerous/exposed locations longer than strictly necessary (waiting for chopper ETAs). This 5min latency was putting people at risk and killing folks.

So I wrote a tool to automate this man's job, in VBA. I picked up the language on site and reduced that latency to ~15s. Being the canadian army, they don't give medals but I got this:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/antoine.im/AIR+WING+COMD+COMMENDATI...

Then, I wrote tools to automate many other parts of the HQ, like a database to handle multiple concurrent critical incidents or a tool to manage airspace for fire missions. Then I realized I liked this programming thing much more than running around with guns. Then I came back to Canada and started a degree in software engineering. Then I'm here today.

My first reaction: "Fuck, we should hire this guy...". Then I read the commendation, read the name and realize we did hire you as an intern last summer, and I know you. I never knew this story though. Really impressive, man.

Not as life-saving, but a friend of mine got a job for the federal or provincial government in NB, I forgot which.

His job was fairly simple: controlling access to information. Other departments would send him requests for information about certain individuals, and his job was to send them the data that they required, but only that data, to prevent other departments from intentionally or inadvertently accessing the wrong data (and violating privacy laws).

So his day consisted of getting an e-mail with a request for data X about person Y, and then sending them that data. A fairly straightforward task, but when he was hired there was a three-month backlog.

After a week or two, he wrote an application in VB that would access the database directly; he could type in a name, choose a result, select fields, generate a PDF, and e-mail it to a given e-mail address. What used to be a 5-10 minute job became a 30 second job. His three-month backlog turned into a three-month headway. People were getting their results within minutes of sending the request, rather than hours, days, or weeks, and productivity everywhere increased.

At this point, his job consisted of sitting at his desk watching anime on his netbook until a request came in, typing for a few seconds, clicking a button, then watching anime again.

He was bored constantly; he asked his boss for more work, something else to do, automation or paperwork or anything, but his boss refused. Union job, defined role, can't give you more work.

Haven't talked to him in ages. For all I know he's linked his app into Outlook to pre-fill fields by now and he's running a startup out of his office in his eight hours a day of extra spare time.

I love that story, it genuinely made my day to read.

It might sound corny, but this is what I like to think the profession is 'all about' - identifying real problems and using our talents with whatever resources are available to solve them.

Best of luck with your studies.

It's an AWESOME story- with a bit of flourish and narrative it would make a great introduction to a book or lecture.

Battle Captain, right? I know exactly how you must have felt. I did this job as a 1LT in a bunker in Korea with shitty outdated MS Office and I never even thought to write a VBA app.

This sounds like an interesting startup idea: TOC software. It would be easy to write. I wonder how difficult it would be to sell to the Army.

I see from your Github that you, too, write Go. We should talk sometime.

http://github.com/chrissnell

I'd like to write logistics software for the Army too. I could have replicated the system we were using in probably a month, maybe less.

Sadly, having done this type of work before replacing existing systems with better UI is seen as a waste of resources and Bulding new systems involves rediculus levels of paperwork and changing requirements.

I once worked on a project that spent 7 years in the planning stages and they decided to take a 6 month break from development after the first demo to reevaluate things. Not because the demo had issues, they where not sure if this was the correct approach.

A different project was considered a complete success except we increased productivity to much.

Yup, in the canadian forces, they call it 'Duty Officer', much less glorious sounding than Battle Captain =)

I think the best way to make a difference with software would be as a consultant, deploying with units and doing work straight from there, in an ad-hoc way. Similarly I guess to the stories about how the Obama elections team worked. Deploying a small group of devs with a battle group, who have for purpose to write custom software to make the battle group more efficient. By participating in the pre-deployment training and exercise, the devs could familiarize themselves with the most important tools that need to be created for the deployment. Then while deployed, polish the rough edges and adapt the tools to new situations.

Otherwise, going through the procurement chain of the army will inevitably lead to insanity and bad software, and no actionable result. We had software when I went about writing those tools; it was just so bad and inappropriate that nobody used it.

The challenge of being a contractor embedded in a unit is that ultimately, someone procured the billet spot for you, and often thinks of you as another resource to be tasked. This tends, unless you're lucky to have a contract rep that let's you flex your expertise, to lead to you solving "good idea fairy" problems instead of solving observable needs.

Better TOC software would be great (though I haven't been in uniform in almost 6 years). But I remember ASAS and ASAS-L being pretty terrible for what they were.

This the Chris Snell that I know from Bikeworld? 'sup, man?

That's a great story and quite inspiring too! It's great that you took the initiative. That's what the military teaches us to do anyway. I think it's amazing what you did because your improvements had real impact and I'm pretty sure you actually ended up saving lives. Great job.

That's an awesome & inspiring story on so many levels, one that gives me chills to read, is fantastic. Thank you very much for sharing.

Really speaks volumes about how key it is to take the initiative upon yourself to solve problems and advance your own knowledge. Thanks again.

Writing code that saves lives is the best kind of code. You deserve that award. Thank you!

This is awesome. I'd love to buy you a beer or a coffee sometime!

Amazing work. Imagine if a skilled developer did 2 week rotations in every department.

That is an amazing story, in more ways than one. I am amazed that these tools DIDN'T already exist.

Heck, my brother is commander of the 10th medical wing in the USAF -- I should ask him what tools he thinks they are lacking.

"Being the canadian army, they don't give medals" - could you clarify that?

The Canadian army doesn't give medals as easily as the US does. You'll never see a Canadian soldier with a rack of medals big as the ones you can see on a US soldier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com