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How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

vivin.net

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Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#61

Post by jpatokal »

NamTaf wrote: post #56
_0nac wrote: post #50

Ah, Army IT style. Back in my conscript days, the unit's secretary once had to take a list of soldiers from system A (LASTNAME/FIRSTNAME) and convert them to the format required by system B (FIRSTNAME,LASTNAME)... so she was doing this manually in Excel: click, highlight, ctrl-X, delete, cursor cursor, ",", ctrl-V, repeat. So I dumped the file to CSV, wrote a one-liner awk script that did the transformation, and impo…

You could text-to-columns it then concant it via B1 & "," & A1 then drag down. Alternatively, you could use =left(find()) and =right(find()) to function it. I touched on it in the mainteannce/ops space, but the admin space is also susceptable to this. I find that there's a very rapid change in fundamental understanding of capability between age groups. Of course there's exceptions in both parties but many people born…

I'm sure you can do that 'natively' in Excel, but not my field of expertise; IIRC I actually spent longer faffing about in the Excel docs looking for a way to do this (and failing) than writing the awk regexes.

It did make me wonder how often some variant of this happens every day. "Data entry" is still a job, after all...

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#62

Post by gdewilde »

On other pages of this website people are being lectured how they should adapt to the website etiquette. I would like to learn how you guys expect Europeans to behave in this context. Should we say what we think? Do you want us to cheer you on? Do you expect us to shut up? How do you want to see this? Just be honest, use whatever language you feel necessary, I'm not easily offended. Here we all thought you would stop eventually, that there would be an end to this. But it has been 34 years now. We've tried pretty much every kind of response. Non of it was what you liked to hear. So, I think it is a fair question? If it isn't, If you think I'm out of line for asking, could you explain why that is? What is the correct behavior for people like myself over the last 34 years. Just your personal opinion, I understand you don't speak for the whole country.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#63

Post by ropz »

My father is a retired South Wales steelworker - he worked in the Hot Mill, which is where you put slabs of steel in, and take huge coils of hot rolled steel out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_%28metalworking%29). The building is half a mile long, and the thickness of the steel slab is gradually reduced as it passes through dozens of rolling stations - pairs of rollers (or rolls as they're called).

To get the best product quality, it's important to monitor the shape of the rolling surface of each roll. If they distort out of tolerance, they have to be taken offline and machined to a new finish - something that would stop production for hours.

My father told me of the time when they bought an expensive new computerised lathe to reduce the time it takes to fix up the rolls - this was in the 1980s when a PC on a production line was still a thing of wonder. For a while, everything worked as planned. Then, for some reason, the quality of the reconditioned rolls dropped drastically. Despite the fact that the PC dump showed that the rolls had perfect surfaces and profiles, production defects skyrocketed and it was discovered that the reconditioned rolls were to blame.

To cut an even longer story short - they eventually discovered that the lathe operator had taught himself how to edit the PC logs (in hex!) to make the results look good, without having to get down and actually do the work.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#64

Post by visakanv »

incision wrote: post #46
AYBABTME wrote: post #13

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 missio…

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.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#65

Post by thearn4 »

chrissnell wrote: post #31
AYBABTME wrote: post #13

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 missio…

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/chr…

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.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#66

Post by mabbo »

AYBABTME wrote: post #13

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 missio…

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.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#67

Post by chrisBob »

suyash wrote: post #11
chrisBob wrote: post #4

Not bad for a motorpool guy. The place that I remember really needing some programmers was on the MI (military intelligence) side. They spend all of their time looking for patterns in data, and in 2009 it was still mostly done by hand. Plus that is where most of the smart Soldiers end up.

Why doesn't the Military hire more computer science graduates then?

The right answer probably isn't to hire computer science people as Soldiers. At least not many of them. It is probably better to just contract out the occasional job where this is needed. It is actually disappointing how few officers can do any programming. They are all college graduates, and I think a little but of computer science is pretty standard these days.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#68

Post by pbhjpbhj »

_0nac wrote: post #50

Ah, Army IT style. Back in my conscript days, the unit's secretary once had to take a list of soldiers from system A (LASTNAME/FIRSTNAME) and convert them to the format required by system B (FIRSTNAME,LASTNAME)... so she was doing this manually in Excel: click, highlight, ctrl-X, delete, cursor cursor, ",", ctrl-V, repeat. So I dumped the file to CSV, wrote a one-liner awk script that did the transformation, and impo…

Occasionally I'll get a letter from the bank or phone company and the name is wrong .. and then I realise that this massive multi-billion turnover company has some poor data entry person retyping my data at some point in their chain. Then I wonder how on Earth they let that happen.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#69

Post by mattlutze »

AYBABTME wrote: post #42
chrissnell wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/chr…

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 w…

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.

Re: How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

#70

Post by theycallmemorty »

AYBABTME wrote: post #13

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 missio…

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