Mutant Marsupials Take Up Arms Against Australian Air Force
I first heard this story in 1999 when I was working with EDS in South Australia, the story was originally sourced from Autralian Customs Service at that point in time, although this happened at Australian Armed Forces in Melbourne, Victoria. For me this was then the story/joke of the decade and it really points out the benefits of object oriented development
The reuse of some object-oriented code has caused tactical headaches for Australia's armed forces. As virtual reality simulators assume larger roles in helicopter combat training, programmers have gone to great lengths to increase the realism of their scenarios, including detailed landscapes, and, in the case of the Northern Territory's Operation Phoenix, herds of kangaroos (since disturbed animals might well give away a helicopter's position).
The head of the Defense Science & Technology Organization's Land Operations/Simulation division reportedly instructed developers to model the local marsupials' movements and reactions to helicopters. Being efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some code originally used to model infantry detachment reactions under the same stimuli, changed the mapped icon from a soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the figures' speed of movement. Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting American pilots, the hotshot Aussies "buzzed" the virtual kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos scattered, as predicted, and the visiting Americans nodded appreciatively... then did a double-take as the kangaroos reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage of Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter.
Apparently the programmers had forgotten to remove that part of the infantry coding
The lesson?
Classes (Objects) are defined with certain attributes, and any new class defined in terms of an old one inherits all the attributes. The embarrassed programmers had learned to be careful when reusing object-oriented code, and the Yanks left with a newfound respect for Australian wildlife. Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that point onward have strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were meant to.
It has been pointed out that the story was slightly different and that the Kangaroos did not really utilize stinger missiles...
The programmers had not added any weapons at that point in the software, so that the kangaroos only had access to the default weapon that was already in the software.
The default weapon available to the Kangaroo Class was
large multicolored beach balls.
[If you thought thought the worst of Aussie worries were crocs, poisonous spiders and snakes, lizards, insects, lethal jellyfish, deadly bluebottle octopussy; but No their real problems are kangaroo freedom fighters.