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An Army Medal For Coding In Perl
shocking writes: Arizona National Guard member Vivin Paliath was surprised to be commended for writing Perl scripts and Excel macros while his unit was deployed in Iraq. His work automated a number of previously manual processes that were part of the logistics processes of his unit. He wrote, '[A]s a programmer, I'm constantly looking for ways to make my job easy. I didn't want to sit and add qualifications, and print licenses one by one. I was too lazy for that, and worse, the whole thing was horribly inefficient. So I decided to figure out how to automate the process. ... I started writing Perl scripts to query the data. By the time we had reached Iraq, I had a working script that generated licenses as text files for all the soldiers. The script only took a second or two to run, and the longest part of the process was simply printing out the licenses. But I wasn't done yet. I was still annoyed that I would have to add driver qualifications manually. So I wrote another script that would go and add qualifications to drivers en masse. The script even had a configuration file where you could specify what qualifications you wanted to add and to whom."
I'm sure there's a CPAN module for that.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Camel, Desert... Perfect combo!
...for coding in Perl.
Are we now going to post an article every time someone uses a programming language for its intended purpose? Where is the fucking story here?
That sounds like hacking to me.
breaking an ankle jumping off a duece and a half you can get a commendation for what that guy did. Army has lots of medals to give, but not many deserving of same. What is the Army to do? Pass them out. Voila! Scopts = medal. P.S. Many medals are not what you think they are.
We used to call guys like that pogues, and we didn't give them medals.
On the other hand, if you could introduce efficiency in military bureaucracy, or any bureaucracy really, good on you!
Sounds a lot like the government is developing its own software. This effort should have been bid out to a private company.
There's a metal for those wounded in combat, and Perl cuts psyches deeply indeed.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It must be the purple heart.
If you make the perl code readable you get the metal of honor.
Anything that improves the efficiency and effectiveness of our forces deserves recognition. If writing code and automating or stream-lining a process is successful, write the person who did it up for a citation or medal. I did it in the navy 20 years ago and received a NAM (Navy Achievement Award) for my efforts. Not all medals given in the military are for combat duties.
where perl almost set off those missiles!
http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol2_1/tpj0201-0004.html
All I did was float around the Big Pond (East coast) in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club DURING the Vietnam era. I also got a medal for behaving 4 years in a row. This guy actually did something. I enjoyed the article.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
He should be court-martialed and dishonorably discharged for aiding the enemy for coding in Perl.
This isn't unusual. I received an Army Commendation Medal (downgraded from a Meritorious Service Medal by the post commander, because "Lieutenants don't get MSMs!"), for writing the first chemical warfare module ever to interface with a combined arms simulation in Fortran on a Univac 1108.
I added graphical pre-and-post processors on the old Tektronix 4054 Graphical Computing Systems. This was at the dawn of the personal computer age. A year earlier, I had built an Altair while I was an enlisted man.
I wrote a nice database system to track inventory cards and print out cards that were pretty much identical to the forms our S-4 used back in the late 80s in the Marine Corps. It was much better than the system they had used - which relied on removing old cards, and filling out, by hand, all new cards every time a piece of equipment was checked out or checked in. It helped alot with leakage... and worse, with equipment that was supposedly checked out, but had actually been checked in (and the Marine would then have to incur replacement cost).
There were other things I worked on, but this one had a significant impact on our effectiveness as a logistics unit.
I'm truly sure this soldier deserved the medal and I am very thankful for his service to our country.
However, I am curious if perhaps these processes sometimes deserve a tedious human interaction. The reporting may be one thing, but I'm curious how much was "assumed" correct because the script(s) was outputting the data. Did he verify by hand afterwards that it was correctly listing qualifications and creating said licenses? How we would he know if there was a failure or an issue, and did he maintain all of the security checks that were in place for the manual process?
I think far to often people put procedures in place for prevention of an "oh-shit" moment that has happened and as time goes on people have forgotten about the "oh-shit" moment eventually leading to a slack in those procedures which just leads to another occurrence of the same "oh-shit" moment.
One of the criteria is "meritorious service."
Writing - on his own - a set of scripts that save that much time for his unit? Should certainly qualify.
Sounds like someone who embodies the Three Virtues of a programmer: Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. Well done!
I'm always amazed at what non-programmers are impressed by. Code up some major application, and... Why doesn't it have this feature? Why does it have that workflow? What kind of colorblind dyslexic idiot designed this UI? But whip up a simple script to automate some repetitive, routine task and you're a genius!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
On one hand, vigilante programming can be a huge benefit for an archaic process fought with bureaucracy but encouraging this behavior without proper software engineering discipline and oversight is obviously disastrous. While I don't feel like this man should be rewarded, I don't feel he should be condemned.
More useful things have been invented out of an express desire to be lazy than I can even count.
The realization of "WTF am I doing this by hand when I can write a script" sparks so many cool things.
If he streamlined his job and got better results I don't see why he shouldn't get recognition.
I'm sure the military hasn't introduced the Perl Star or anything, so I'm sure they've worked within existing stuff to say "damn, son, that's some fine work".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
He should have kept his mouth shut and let everyone assume he was doing everything manually. That way, he could have just played video games all day while his scripts did most of the work. That would have been way better getting a medal.
I avoided the military and so got no medals.
I didn't get shot either, so on balance I consider that a win.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Years ago, I was an Air Force enlisted programmer AFSC 511/491. Sure, I was in the military but I didn't have a combat rating. I haven't looked at the citation that accompanied my medals, but I wouldn't be surprised to see obscure programming references like Ada, PL/1, and CP/M. The one sad change is that it was an awesome career path for people to go high school to military and get their computer training on the job. I've never completed my college education, but hold a job as an Enterprise Data Architect. Unfortunately the beltway bandits now do the same job I was payed less than $1500 a month to perform. And they only gouge the tax payers low-mid six figures to perform the same task (SAIC,GE,SAP,Oracle,etc..). The day's of the low paid high performing enlisted programmer are part of history. Congress and the DOD will never willing cut off a funding source and perpetual wealth through the revolving contractor door.
In this case it would be a ruby heart.
Get this man to the VA stat!
I did exactly the same when I had an industrial placement year as part of my CS degree. Part of my role as a systems analyst was to sanitise log files and system messages manually and to alert the correct person if certain combinations happened at once (as it suggested all sorts of problems). They didn't want a developer, they just wanted me to tell them what was going on.
I automated my job, got congratulated and got moved onto an ITIL project. I should've told no one and just reaped the benefits.
Uhu, but did your program have a configuration file, you lamer?
I take it Google and NASA are preparing offers for this guy as we speak. (Or Facebook. He obviously knows how to work the networks social.)
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
To me the shocker is that a soldier wrote code and it wasn't outsourced to a "cyber" consultant in the Washington DC metroplex area. I'm surprised he was even allowed to do something like this and not punished. What's next, peeling their own potatoes?
The next time someone asks "What good is Perl anymore?" or "Who actually uses Perl?" or "Why use Perl?" you can point them to this article. Perl is perfect for this type of quick development. Sometimes the older languages still have a lot of value.
We used to call guys like that pogues, and we didn't give them medals. On the other hand, if you could introduce efficiency in military bureaucracy, or any bureaucracy really, good on you!
Careful where you draw the line between "fighting men" and "office workers". I knew someone who was a Yeoman, does the ship's paperwork, on a destroyer during WW2. He only did paperwork between the fighting. When the ship went to general quarters he put down the pencil and became part of the crew of a 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun. For those unfamiliar, this was not a gun where the crew had some protection inside a turret. Bofors' crew were on deck and exposed to enemy fire, debris/fuel from aircraft destroyed and friendly fire.
This right here is why we should be teaching basic programming or scripting in middle school. Show young students how to automate simple tasks and they'll apply it to nearly every field that exists. I remember talking to an IT consultant about the recently released Exchange 2007 (when Exchange went all gung-ho about PowerShell) and he said how he hated the de-emphasis on the GUI and the huge emphasis on PowerShell. "On my first deployment I didn't use PowerShell at all. But by my third one, it was all done by PowerShell scripts."
Meritorius medal for streamlining things w/ perl, and a dishonorable discharge for doing *anything* with Excel.
And before the accusations fly, my statement stands no matter what spreadsheet program you replace "Excel" with. They aren't database tools and shouldn't be used as such.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Perl Traumatic Stress Disorder
My thanks to this young man for his sacrifice, from a fellow perl hacker who's spent 15 years in the trenches...
The hard working guy? He is quite willing to keep on doing his work the hard way,spending his own time and effort instead of the computer's time.
It's us lazy guys that say "this is stupid, the computer can do this part". Then we write the code and let the software do the hard work, instead of us.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
... during Military Funeral Honors as Perl is Dead -- dying in the line of duty.
Seastead this.
This is nothing, I once got a Navy Achievement Medal (one step down from a Commendation medal) for setting up a mail alias on my own domain for my reserve unit to use for group communications, and for installing and updating anti-virus software on the unit's laptops. It all literally took me half an hour to complete.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
For writing some translation code in C that did in seconds what took us hours to do manually. That was pretty cool.
I was a software developer in the Marine Corps and received two NAMs for software that I wrote as a Lance Corporal and Corporal. One handled meal card/chow hall processing and auditing for Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton (and which I understand is used Marine Corps-wide now) the other automated personnel lookup and legal processing and auditing.
My guess is that there are a good number of programmers in the military writing useful software and getting medals for it because they impressed their commander.
Yup, even had user preferences. I'm not trying to take away from this guy because ULLS is a shitty program to have to work with, so good on him for automating it. It's just not an "OMG! Teh Army lovez nerds!" type thing I see a bunch of people thinking it is.
Remember before criticizing the US Army, it's considered the best in the world, largely because of quartermaster capabilities.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
...but instead of some sort of recognition or reward for increased efficiency, they removed one of our team members. I guess I can at least put it on my resume and apply for a better employer...
Twinstiq, game news
The army is all about making things miserable for other people. It's no surprise they award a medal for someone coding a piece of software in perl.
stop being a whiny cunt.
Usually it's lead. Though it might be cold steel.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This just reminds me of my 5+ years doing Perl, going the extra mile, staying back while others left on the dot, working weekends for free and never even getting a thank you.
Like Homer, I've since learnt not to try.
anymore
and then have no work done while they find a new guy? also the commanding officer has say over if they want to press changes.
Since he was doing it in what could be considered a warzone, would he get the "V" device for it?
Anybody who has ever been in the military knows that if you don't screw up your tour of duty, when you leave or transfer to a different station, you usually get a medal. Most often for the US Army this will be an Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM) or Army Achievement Medal (AAM). In order to get the award approved, the commanding officer has to write down something that the soldier did worthy of an award. No sense in blowing this out of proportion.
You thought outside the BOX! That is General material!
But seriously the military does so many things ass backwards and there are people who will be mad at your because you now have replaced 3 people with one person.
Just think on the civilian sector working for the Federal Gov you have eliminated 4 jobs and have saved tax payers millions in paychecks and retirement benefits.
But you have just put 100+ people out of a job and they are mad at your because the Gov owes them something.
Don't rock the boat because people don't want anything to get better. They want things to remain the same.
Want a living wage working at MC Dookies!? Suuuuure!!!! Bring out those iPad POS systems! Who needs workers manning the front counter! Get in the back Fry guy!
...you wouldn't be using perl and excel in the first place.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
This story bears out the old adage: "A lazy programmer is a good programmer"
I have only ever heard jarheads (marines) use that term. It isn't surprising that those dumbfucks get their acronyms all wrong.
The really well-known medals like Victoria Cross / Congressional Medal are not awarded for merely doing your job, but there are medals for all sorts of things.
Simply being in a combat zone, regardless of the actual task one is doing, is more dangerous and requires more courage than anything most people will do in their entire life, and merits recognition of a certain degree.
This simply shows how screwed up the military is. Frankly I WANT that inefficiency because if they were too efficient they would be a threat to humanity, peace and liberty.
Someone's a jealous little whiny bitch.
I went to work for an insurance software company in Dallas. It was basically a data control job. I found several laborious task that were being done in my department as well as in operations. I wrote several programs to automate these manual processes, as well as a program that reduced the large billing the company was getting because of faulty operation's procedures and job reruns. I got a programming job offer just after all of the cleanup and the company was shocked to learn that I had accepted it. I got an open offer to go where ever I wanted in the company. I graciously declined, since I had already accepted the other position and wanted the new job in Austin. There are a few, but not many from my observation, very innovative people who have the talent to see a need and fix it. If they are not recognized and rewarded, they will go somewhere else where they might be appreciated.
The US Army, at the forefront of technology. What is this revolutionary thing called automation and programming? And what is this Peal stuff? Futuristic alien technology? Fuck yeah, US Army entering 1950 with vigor!
what sick people you are
I got a Letter of Commendation for coding in Aston-Tate's dBase II in the mid 1980's. I don't see a controversy.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
And if it matters, I still write data to .dbf files. (Because Excel will still read them, unlike Lotus 1-2-3.)
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT