Samuel Taggart

Samuel Taggart

The official "Architect of Adventure". I help teams create healthy, human-centered software development processes.
The Object Oriented Thought Process

The Object Oriented Thought Process

This book was recommended to me by 2 different people. Several years ago Nancy recommended this book to me when I was first learning OOP. I generally trust Nancy’s recommendations (she has made some very good recommendations in the past such as XUnit Test Patterns and Continuous Delivery) and
7 min read
Innaugural GDevCon N.A. Recap

Innaugural GDevCon N.A. Recap

It took a while, but I finally wanted to get around to writing a recap of GDevCon N.A. I was waiting until we got all our videos back and uploaded to our YouTube Channel. See below. If you missed anything, you’ll definitely want to check those out. Presentation
3 min read
Premature Reuse

Premature Reuse

Premature Optimization Premature Optimization is a phrase that is often heard in software engineering. It’s where you envision some potential performance bottleneck, so as you are writing the code, you go out of your way to create the most optimum code (ie written in a way that the compiler
6 min read
Re-Humanizing The Workplace

Re-Humanizing The Workplace

I’ve known Chuck Blakeman for many years. He runs a group for business owners that I participate in called 3to5 Club. There is an educational component, but it’s really just a business owner’s support group. It’s a place to get together and talk about all the
2 min read
TLDR

TLDR

I’ve been doing a bit of Linux work lately, and I’ve stumbled upon this thing called TLDR, so I thought I would share it here. Manpages If you do much Linux work, one of the first things you should have learned about was manpages. This is the Linux
2 min read
2022 Goals

2022 Goals

Every year I find it useful to sit down and set some goals for the year. It helps to give me some direction. I usually split them into business goals and personal goals. I also typically put together a reading list for the upcoming year. Here are my goals for
4 min read
2021 in Review

2021 in Review

Each year I like to sit down and review the year. See what worked and what didn’t. I find it’s a nice way to wrap things up. It also helps to prep and set goals for next year. I’ll start with a recap and then look back
9 min read
Checking for New GitLab Releases

Checking for New GitLab Releases

In my previous posts, I talked about automatic versioning and automatically creating releases. The next step is to create auto-updating code. By auto-updating I don’t mean code that automatically updates behind your user’s back ala Windows 10. You can do that if you want, but I believe the
6 min read
Automating Gitlab Releases

Automating Gitlab Releases

My previous post talked about versioning. I thought I would add to that discussion by talking about how I do releases and how I setup auto-updating in my apps, using the GitLab Package Repository. This a new feature I’ve started adding lately, so it’s still a work in
8 min read
Automatic Versioning

Automatic Versioning

At the GLA Summit recently minted LabVIEW Champion Felipe Pinheiro Silva gave a 7×7 on versioning. It was interesting. Be sure to take a few minutes and watch it when the video is released. I do things slightly differently. I learned my method from another LabVIEW Champion, Stefan Lemmens.
7 min read
Fierce Conversations

Fierce Conversations

I have a friend named John. Often when you talk to people there is a lot of small talk. How’s the weather? How’s the local sports team doing? etc. If we are honest half the time we ask these questions without even listening or caring about the answer.
1 min read
Its Already Hard, Don't Make It Worse.

Its Already Hard, Don't Make It Worse.

I was ice climbing with a buddy once in the Adirondacks We had hiked up to the bottom of Multiplication Gully, which is a very popular climb. It was 25 degrees out, but it’s a steep approach and we were carrying heavy packs so we hiked up in long
3 min read
Rituals

Rituals

Rituals are an important part of humanity. We’ve been performing them for years. They serve a purpose. They help us to form good habits. As everyday examples, you probably have rituals around brushing your teeth or around washing your hands. There are certain triggers that you use to tell
3 min read
Probably Are Gonna Need It (PAGNI)

Probably Are Gonna Need It (PAGNI)

YAGNI Software engineers like acronyms. It makes it easy to remember and refer to certain ideas. You’ve likely heard the acronym YAGNI, which stands for “You Ain’t Gonna Need It.” The premise behind this is that as software engineers, we have a tendency to overengineer things. We often
3 min read
Practical SQL

Practical SQL

I recently worked on a project where I did a bunch of database work. It had been a while since I had done any database work. I was feeling a little rusty. A while ago I had picked up a copy of Practical SQL. It was staring at me from
2 min read
Finally GDevCon N.A.!

Finally GDevCon N.A.!

Today is the start of GDevCon NA. As you are reading this, we are holding the first in-person LabVIEW conference since the pandemic started. We’ve got a great lineup of speakers planned. It is sure to be a great time. Thank you to everyone who made it possible! We
1 min read
The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow

So what does a book about racism and criminal justice have to do with LabVIEW? Well on the surface, not a whole lot. Until you realize that all code is written by and for humans. Anything that helps us better understand ourselves and the human condition will make us a
1 min read
Legacy Code Testing and Requirements

Legacy Code Testing and Requirements

One of the first traps you run into as a developer working on Legacy Code is to ask for the original requirements. It seems logical. Let’s figure out what the original designers of the machine intended. However for legacy code, that is a rabbit hole that will lead you
3 min read
Working Effectively With Legacy Code

Working Effectively With Legacy Code

Several people have recommended this book to me over the years. I only recently got around to reading it. Software developers continue to recommend this 15-year-old book for good reason. It is quite useful because we all encounter legacy code and all of its techniques are still highly relevant. Thesis
2 min read
The Joel Test

The Joel Test

The Joel Test is a classic. It’s been around for a while and is still increbibly relevant. It’s probably one of his most popular articles. I thought I would just go through each item and comment on how they apply to LabVIEW today. Looking at Joel’s list
6 min read
Trouble Shooting GitLabCI

Trouble Shooting GitLabCI

I saw a post recently on LinkedIn by Jim Kring. He had some issues with a build hanging unexpectedly. They were running Jenkins under a system account and therefore it was really hard to see what was going on to be able to troubleshoot it. Jim then linked to a
3 min read