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.

Author here, ask me anything. And don’t miss the related work section at the end — there’s a ton of links there to inspiring work.