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I was an infantry officer deployed in Afghanistan with the Canadian Forces when I found myself hacking VB(A) programs to relief me off my HQ charge. Then I end

I was an infantry officer deployed in Afghanistan with the Canadian Forces when I found myself hacking VB(A) programs to relief me off my HQ charge. Then I ended up automating all of my HQ's stations such that nobody had to do anything anymore. The things I made were so ugly [1,2,3], it's laughable. But they were very functional, in comparison to the crap we were supposed to use, and for which the Army had paid millions of dollars. I was reserve. I tried to transfer reg forces (full time) during my tour, but budget compressions left no position available for me to fill. Meanwhile, I received recognition for the work I had done [4]. So in spite of my failure to transfer full-time infantry officer, I realized a quite credible alternative would be to actually code things for a living, since anyway that's what I end up doing when I'm thrown in a giant sandbox. When I came back to Canada, I enlisted in a Software Engineering undergraduate program. I'm 2½ years in, this Summer will be my first COOP term (out of 4) and I've succeeded in getting an offer to intern with Amazon. Life is strange. I was quite disappointed that I couldn't transfer to reg force. It's quite a blessing, in retrospective. [1]: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Project/blog-post-afgh-tools/incident_manager/Screen%20Shot%202012-12-27%20at%208.34.13%20PM.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Project/blog-post-afgh-too... [2]: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Project/blog-post-afgh-tools/j3_avn_helper/overview.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Project/blog-post-afgh-too... [3]: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Project/blog-post-afgh-tools/incident_manager/Screen%20Shot%202012-12-27%20at%208.38.42%20PM.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Project/blog-post-afgh-too... [4]: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Pics/AIR%20WING%20COMD%20COMMENDATION%20-%20LT%20GRONDIN%20-%20Aug%202010.jpg https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21733074/Pics/AIR%20WING%20COMD%20C...

notJim 14y ago
[Wo?]Man, little "apps" like that built using Excel or Access or VB with drag and drop RUN THE WORLD. I worked at a few BigCos, and they were riddled with things like that, where some enterprising person realized computers are better at tedium than people, and learned just barely enough programming to make something to make their job easier.
- AYBABTME 14y ago
  I didn't know any programming (aside from Assembly, but that's another story!) when I initially started doing this! When I caught on, I kept going, fuelled by my anger against the older folks in my team who couldn't type fast enough, putting in jeopardy lives of casualties on the ground who were waiting for a chopper to bring them to the hospital. The ugly mess of MEDEVAC things you see there, replaced a 15 minutes process of: measuring on a map, computing on a calculator and manually typing things on the computer; with just a dozen of clicks and consistent, reliable and precise information. Now, I learnt a whole lot since 2010, so this is not quite representative of products I would produce nowadays. Oh and I'm a man; Antoine is a French name solely used for men. ;)
  - rdl 14y ago
    If this was the tool at KAF, thank you for writing it! (a friend of mine was a CF doctor there, and I spent some time in radiology getting the US PACS stuff integrated with the Canadian stuff)
    - AYBABTME 14y ago
      I know it was used at TFK for I was there and originally, at that time, we were the only unit operating around KAF (aside from the defence team of KAF itself). Later our area of operation got split in half and shared with TF Striker, a US mechanized brigade. I shared my tool with them and I know my counterpart in their brigade HQ used them, but I don't know for how long as I left a little later. For a period between April 2010 and Sept 2010 (maybe going later than that), all of TFK's MEDEVAC, which must have accounted for over 70% of MEDEVACs in KAF, were fulfilled using this tool.

notJim 14y ago

[Wo?]Man, little "apps" like that built using Excel or Access or VB with drag and drop RUN THE WORLD. I worked at a few BigCos, and they were riddled with things like that, where some enterprising person realized computers are better at tedium than people, and learned just barely enough programming to make something to make their job easier.

AYBABTME 14y ago
I didn't know any programming (aside from Assembly, but that's another story!) when I initially started doing this! When I caught on, I kept going, fuelled by my anger against the older folks in my team who couldn't type fast enough, putting in jeopardy lives of casualties on the ground who were waiting for a chopper to bring them to the hospital. The ugly mess of MEDEVAC things you see there, replaced a 15 minutes process of: measuring on a map, computing on a calculator and manually typing things on the computer; with just a dozen of clicks and consistent, reliable and precise information. Now, I learnt a whole lot since 2010, so this is not quite representative of products I would produce nowadays. Oh and I'm a man; Antoine is a French name solely used for men. ;)
- rdl 14y ago
  If this was the tool at KAF, thank you for writing it! (a friend of mine was a CF doctor there, and I spent some time in radiology getting the US PACS stuff integrated with the Canadian stuff)
  - AYBABTME 14y ago
    I know it was used at TFK for I was there and originally, at that time, we were the only unit operating around KAF (aside from the defence team of KAF itself). Later our area of operation got split in half and shared with TF Striker, a US mechanized brigade. I shared my tool with them and I know my counterpart in their brigade HQ used them, but I don't know for how long as I left a little later. For a period between April 2010 and Sept 2010 (maybe going later than that), all of TFK's MEDEVAC, which must have accounted for over 70% of MEDEVACs in KAF, were fulfilled using this tool.