The SAS Workshops Blog

SCC , Continuous Integration

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.

Design Patterns , Coding Philosophy

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

Webinars

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

Continuous Integration , SCC , How to , OOP

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

Book Reviews , Continuous Integration

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

Software tools , Linux , Resources

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

Python , Unit Testing

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

How to , Software tools

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

Conferences

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

Coding Philosophy

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

Unit Testing , Software tools , RT

Unit Testing on Real Time Targets

I’ve written a lot previously on unit testing and the value of unit tests. I try very hard to write unit tests for all my software and i try to use Test Driven Development (TDD) as much as I can. It’s not always easy. I just started a

Conferences , Announcements

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

Book Reviews

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

Software tools

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

Book Reviews

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

How to

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

Coding Philosophy , Community

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.

Book Reviews , Linux

How Linux Works

This is a book that has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I started using Linux about 5 years ago when I started my own business. Starting out on my own required me to be my own IT guy so I setup a Redmine and SVN server. The

Coding Philosophy

Tech Debt Day

A friend of mine posted the video below and I was immediately struck by it. Guilty as charged. I am definitely a procrastinator in many areas of my life. If you watch the video until the end, you’ll find out that we all are on some level. Even if

Frameworks , Interviews , Community

DQMH Podcast

It’s offical! The DQMH podcast form Chris Farmer at Wired-in Software has been officially released! It’s exciting to have some new listening material about LabVIEW! It’s been a while since we have had a good LabVIEW Podcast. We used to have VIshots which hasn’t produced anything

SCC , Resources

Oh Shit Git

So, I have written a bit about Git lately. I’ve spent a fair amount studying and thinking about Git and how we use it. As part of that research I stumbled upon a really useful and humorous site called ohshitgit. Oh Shit Git covers 9 different common scenarios and

Software tools

Camtasia

I have been working on putting together some prerecorded online classes. I have been using Camtasia and Snagit a lot lately, so I thought I would do a quick writeup on them. I first discovered these tools when doing some videos for NI. That is what they had recommended for

Book Reviews

The Richest Man in Babylon

I have been listening to Dave Ramsey since I got out of college. His principles did help me to pay off all of my college debt and start off on the right foot. I have been listening to conservative financial advice ever since then. I had heard of “The Richest

Book Reviews

Guerilla marketing

This book is slightly dated. The edition I read was published in 2005. That is before smartphones and social media became all the rage. Things have definitely changed since then. This book still has some value since it focuses on principles. The execution certainly has changed but the principles are

Coding Philosophy

Practical Versus Theoretical

I am a big believer in personal development and growth. One of the things that often keeps us from growing is lack of awareness. There may be certain ways that we present ourselves or ways that others perceive us that we aren’t aware of. I did an exercise recently