Samuel Taggart

Samuel Taggart

The official "Architect of Adventure". I help teams create healthy, human-centered software development processes.
2020 in review

2020 in review

Well, what can I say: “It was a heck of a year. Thank God 2021 is here.” At least it rhymes. When I look back at 2020, I had grand plans and for the first month or two things went really well. My in-person workshops in January went very well
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Permanent Record

Permanent Record

If you haven’t heard of Edward Snowden, you probably haven’t been paying much attention. He definitely made the news a few years ago by exposing the extent to which the NSA was spying on American Citizens. His revelations really made American’s re-think online security and privacy. He
2 min read
Start with Why

Start with Why

Simon Sinek rocked the business world several years age with a Tedx talk called Start with Why. He introduced the idea called the Golden Circle which talks about What we do, How we do it, and Why we do it. His thesis is that most people talk about what they
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Soft Skills for Software Development

Soft Skills for Software Development

We tend to equate writing software with technical skills. It certainly does involve some technical skills, but really writing great software is all about human skills, often called soft skills. It’s all about how you interact with other people. Typically you are working in a group and even if
3 min read
Making Work Fun

Making Work Fun

For many people work is a four-letter word. It’s something they do because they have to. Maybe they once enjoyed it, but now they are feeling burnt out. It doesn’t have to be that way. In his book the Fun Formula Joel Comm lays out an alternative to
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Debug Driven Development

Debug Driven Development

Recently on episode 5 of the DQMH podcast, Chris interviewed Joerg of Hampelsoft. There was a lot of good conversation, but one of the things that stuck with me was the idea of Debug Driven Development. That is writing code in such a way that it is easy to debug
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2021 Podcast list

2021 Podcast list

If you read this blog you are probably aware that I listen to a fair amount of podcasts. I thought I would just compile a list of my favorites in case anyone was looking to add to their list for 2021. LabVIEW Related Podcasts DQMH Podcast Chris Farmer put this
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Continuous Integration vs Feature Branches

Continuous Integration vs Feature Branches

After reading the Continuous Delivery Book, I have been thinking a lot about branching strategies and Continuous Integration versus Feature Branching. I put together this little chart of the pros and cons of each. Feature BranchingContinuous IntegrationTrustDoes not require trust. You can control via GitLab who can merge into main
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Fowler's Branching Patterns

Fowler's Branching Patterns

Martin Fowler is prolific writer about software development. One of his more well-known books is probably Refactoring. He also has a blog with lots of good content. After reading the Continuous Delivery book and working on my Using Git Effectively course, I have been thinking a lot about branching strategies.
2 min read
Keystone Pattern

Keystone Pattern

Reading the Continuous Delivery book recently has got me thinking a lot about ways to achieve continuous integration while still adding new features. The book suggested Branch By Abstraction as a way to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. It also mentioned the Keystone pattern. The real problem the
2 min read
December 2020 Webinar

December 2020 Webinar

Antidoc – The Solution to Documentation December 15th, 11:00am MT We believe in finding better ways to write software. You can be productive and still have fun. We help developers be more productive and have more fun by taking complex software engineering topics and breaking them down into small pieces
2 min read
Branch by Abstraction

Branch by Abstraction

In the past I have been a big fan of Git Flow. I still am, but I recently read the book Continuous Delivery and it has me rethinking some things. In particular they talk about Continuous Integration and not using feature branches, which is a very large component of Git
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Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery

A year or two ago, I was talking to Nancy about my interest in Continuous Integration (CI). She put me onto this book called Continuous Delivery (CD). It’s a little dated. The technologies have changed but all the principles still apply. If you are interesting in learnig more about
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Zsh

Zsh

Oh My ZSH If you follow this blog, you will know that I am a huge fan of the Maintainable podcast by Robby Russell. It contains lots of great information about working with Legacy Code and how to write code so that you avoid a lot of the issues with
5 min read
Tests are like bicycle helmets

Tests are like bicycle helmets

I was listening to the IEEE’s SE Radio podcast the other day while riding my bike to work (ironic as you will see if you keep reading). They were interviewing Ken Youens-Clark who wrote a book called Tiny Python Projects. You would never put a kid on a bicycle
1 min read
Getting Started with 3-D Printing

Getting Started with 3-D Printing

I did a job a few years ago for a mining company. We were building a tester to test soil samples. I was amazed that many of the parts for the tester were 3-d printed. I thought it was pretty cool technology. At the time I thought it could be
4 min read
Don't Miss the GLA

Don't Miss the GLA

The GLA Summit is going on today! There should be lot’s of good content. I am doing a presentation together with Tom McQuillan of Tom’s LabVIEW Adventure fame on our efforts to implement the Gang of Four Patterns in LabVIEW 2020, now that we have interfaces. You should
1 min read
Dive into the source

Dive into the source

If you have been following this blog, it should be no surprise that I listen to the Maintainable podcast. It is a great resource. The other day I was listening and I heard a clip that really spoke to me. Justin Searls is talking about debugging and not being afraid
1 min read
Join us at the GLA

Join us at the GLA

You may have noticed that we did not schedule a webinar this month. That is because I have been busy putting together a presentation with Tom McQuillan of Tom’s LabVIEW Adventure fame on the Gang of Four for the GLA Summit on November 9th. We’ve decided to redo
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How To Be An AntiRacist

How To Be An AntiRacist

Occassionally on this blog, I write about things that appear to have nothing to do with LabVIEW. This is one of those times. Although I do think this topic is relevant to anyone who works in a team setting, which is most of us. Most teams these days tend to
1 min read
Don't Waste Time Manually Writing Documentation

Don't Waste Time Manually Writing Documentation

We all know documentation is important. Our software will likely need to be updated and upgraded at some point, oftentimes by another person who is unfamiliar with it. Even if we are the ones doing the updates we may not remember all the important details. That is why documentation is
2 min read
Good Content

Good Content

You may be aware of our Virtual Coffee events. If you are not, just send me an email to sam (at) sasworkshops (dot) com and I’ll send you an invite. Several of us who attend the Virtual Coffee, also run our own businesses. Malcolm Myers was nice enough to
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PPL Paths

PPL Paths

As some of you may know, we host a Virtual Coffee on Tuesday mornings. It started out as a part of our local LabVIEW User Group ALARM. A bunch of us ALARM members would get together every couple weeks in person for coffee. When COVID hit, we couldn’t do
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DQMH Podcast Interview

DQMH Podcast Interview

I had previously mentioned the DQMH podcast. Chris just posted an interview that I did with him a few weeks ago. If you are interested in what we are doing here at SAS Workshops and learning more about how we can help you, then be sure to check it out.
1 min read