Inmates Program Logistics App For Prison 98
schweini writes "Inmates in an Oklahoma prison developed software that attempts to streamline the prison's food logistics. A state representative found out, and he's trying to get every other prison in Oklahoma to use it, too. According to the Washington Post, 'The program tracks inmates as they proceed through food lines, to make sure they don’t go through the lines twice... It can help the prison track how popular a particular meal is, so purchasers know how much food to buy in the future. And it can track tools an inmate checks out to perform their jobs.' The program also tracks supply shipments into the system, and it showed that food supplier Sysco had been charging different prices for the same food depending on which facility it was going to. Another state representative was impressed, but realized the need for oversight: 'If they build on what they’ve done here, they actually have to script it out. If you have inmates writing code, there has to be a continual auditing process. Food in prison is a commodity. It’s currency.'"
Re:Teaching Software Development (Score:3, Funny)
And maybe during that process, help enlighten other curious inmates as to how the system and programming works.
And five years from now, Google and Microsoft and Facebook will be whining how there simply aren't enough prisoners to meet IT demands.
Sorry, but I'll stick with the H1Bs.
Re:Teaching Software Development (Score:4, Funny)
There's approximately ten billion* startups being launched every day, and each startup benefits from a couple decent coders. The individual startups might not all be viable in the long term, but if anyone is going to be willing to jump from opportunity to opportunity, I'd think it would be an ex-con.
*May include other galactic civilizations