
Samuel Taggart
The official "Architect of Adventure". I help teams create healthy, human-centered software development processes.




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




Fixing Legacy Code: Missing The Forest For The Trees
Sometimes I wonder if we are missing the point by fixing legacy code. It’s not that we shouldn’t fix bad code when we encounter it, but it’s more a feeling of we’re missing an important opportunity. Let’s start with something that you may be familiar


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


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







Seven Transformational Training Assumptions
In the appendix of his book “Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea”, Chuck Blakeman lays out his philosophy around training with 7 fundamental assumptions. Since we are all about training, coaching and mentoring here at SAS Workshops, I thought I would elaborate on his 7 assumptions and how I
GDevCon NA 2021 is on, in person!
GDevCon NA is now selling tickets! There are still some early bird tickets available. The date is October 20-21st in Boulder, CO. It’s going to be super exciting. We are also looking for more presenters and sponsors.
You can get more info and buy tickets here: https://gdevconna.org/

Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea
Dilbert has been poking fun at corporate America for quite some time now. It wouldn’t be so funny if it did not contain some truth. Corporate America is broken and we all know it. “Why Employees are always a bad idea” explains why Dilbert resonates so much and what


Simplest Thing That Could Work
It seems like I have been giving the same piece of advice lately: Start with the simplest thing that could possibly work and only add complication as you need it. Sometimes our natural tendency is to plan for all eventualities. We get so caught up planning for what might happen,

A case for sets
Back in LabVIEW 2019, NI introduced both sets and maps. Maps became immediately popular. They should be. They are very useful constructs. However, sets seem to have gotten much less attention. In some ways, they aren’t as glamorous, but they do offer some advantages over arrays. To me, these
