TITLE: Computer Science Everywhere, Military Edition
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 09, 2015  3:40 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Military Operations Orders are programs that are executed by
 units.  Code re-use and other software engineering principles
 applied regularly to these.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

An alumnus of my department, a CS major-turned-military officer,
wrote those lines in an e-mail responding to my recent post,
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2014-12.html#e2014-12-28T11_12_54.htm">
   A Little CS Would Help a Lot of College Grads</A>.
Contrary to what many people might imagine, he has found what he
learned in computer science to be quite useful to him as an Army
captain.  And he wasn't even a programmer:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 One of the biggest skills I had over my peers was organizing
 information.  I wasn't writing code, but I was handling lots
 of data and designing systems for that data.  Organizing
 information in a way that was easy to present to my superiors
 was a breeze and having all the supporting data easily
 accessible came naturally to me.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Skills and principles from software engineering and project
development apply to systems other than software.  They also
provide a vocabulary for talking about ideas that non-programmers
encounter every day:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 I did introduce my units to the terms border cases, special
 cases, and layers of abstraction.  I cracked a smile every time
 I heard those terms used in a meeting.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Excel may not be a "real programming language", but knowing the
ways in which it is a language can make managers of people and
resources more effective at what they do.

For more about how a CS background has been useful to this officer,
check out
<A HREF="http://ahabeger.blogspot.com/2015/01/cs-degree-to-army-officer.html">
   CS Degree to Army Officer</A>,
a blog entry that expands on his experiences.
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