{"id":23,"date":"2016-03-19T16:55:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/?p=23"},"modified":"2016-03-19T16:59:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:59:51","slug":"field-devd-excel-tool-literally-saved-lives-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/?p=23","title":{"rendered":"Field-dev’d Excel tool literally saved lives in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent blog post, “An Infantryman Learns to Code<\/a>“, Canadian\u00a0coder Antoine Grondin describes learning to code using Excel VBA in Kandahar, Afghanistan.\u00a0 His story is typical of many people who have turned to\u00a0Excel for solving immediate challenges.\u00a0 What isn’t typical is that his solution actually saved lives<\/strong> by reducing the time it took to respond to requests for MEDEVAC from 5 minutes to 15 seconds.\u00a0 (Also unusual, he was rewarded and praised for his accomplishment.)<\/p>\n

\"\"Delays responding to IED attacks were frustrating and lethal.\u00a0 Antoine knew that automating the process with a computer program would speed this up but he had no idea where to start. “I googled a bit and came up with people saying that to program, you had to learn Java or C, and needed a compiler for them.” But those resources weren’t available to him.\u00a0 Excel was.<\/p>\n

A familiar story for Microsoft Office developers.\u00a0 People on the “front line” know they need to solve a problem.\u00a0 Pros tell them they need skills that are unavailable and tools that are unauthorized. What do clever humans do when they refuse to give up?\u00a0 Use available materials.\u00a0 Excel\u00a0& VBA\u00a0are an easy entry point for\u00a0non-coders with an\u00a0aptitude for problem-solving. Unfortunately, VBA is too often dismissed as inadequate or unserious.\u00a0\u00a0Anything popular amongst the muggles\u00a0must not be legit. \u00a0But for version 1.0 prototypes its often the perfect option.\u00a0 No one else was going to develop that solution for Antoine.\u00a0 He did it himself.\u00a0\u00a0He understood the problem intimately and knew instinctively what a good result would look like.\u00a0 Once proven, this application could be completely rewritten by a “pro” if there was a compelling reason.<\/p>\n

\"\"
When a power user develops a tool for their coworkers, he rarely thinks about branding. It doesn’t get a fancy codename like “Centurion Epicator Commforce III”. It’s called “Antoine’s J3 AVN helper” (see cell B1 above). Or “Jada’s Estimate tool” or “Nick’s Order tracker”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Can you imagine a complete noob being able to get the same result with Java or C#?\u00a0 First timers in Excel usually start with input\/output right on the sheet.\u00a0 Then move to validation, drop-downs, buttons, UserForms, add-ins, etc.\u00a0 Start simple, build skills, harden the application.\u00a0 Here’s a complex data entry form he designed:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Antoine humbly shares some of his “first lines of code<\/a>” on GitHub warning us “it may hurt your feelings” because its got new-coder smells.\u00a0 But that’s not\u00a0a symptom of VBA, its\u00a0because it was his first project and he was untrained.<\/p>\n

Once he discovered the inherent power in Excel, Antoine built more solutions, got recognized by leadership and became a professional software developer in civilian world, graduating this year with a comp sci degree. He’s working for DigitalOcean now.<\/p>\n

Kudos, Antoine.\u00a0 Next time someone says Excel VBA is for sissies…I’m going to send them to you.<\/p>\n\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent blog post, “An Infantryman Learns to Code“, Canadian\u00a0coder Antoine Grondin describes learning to code using Excel VBA in Kandahar, Afghanistan.\u00a0 His story is typical of many people who have turned to\u00a0Excel for solving immediate challenges.\u00a0 What isn’t typical is that his solution actually saved lives by reducing the time it took to … Continue reading “Field-dev’d Excel tool literally saved lives in Afghanistan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}