The SAS Workshops Blog (Page 14)

Workshops update

These are interesting times. Many of us are under mandatory shelter in place orders and the rest of us are practicing social distancing. Those of us who are fortunate enough not to have been directly impacted by the virus are nonetheless impacted by society’s attempts to stop its spread.

Goals

Rebranding

You may have noticed that our domain name has changed and we are now branding ourselves as SAS Workshops. Rest assured we are still the same people (ie right now primarily just me, Sam Taggart) We are still doing the same thing we have been doing recently which is helping

Book Reviews , Unit Testing

Art of Unit Testing 2nd edition

I originally bought this book on Fab’s recommendation. I had read the XUnit Test Patterns book and I liked it, but I thought it was rather large and cumbersome. It was 900 pages, so I was looking for something smaller and lightweight that I could recommend to people. I

Unit Testing , Coding Philosophy

Distributing Test Doubles and Mocks

One of the questions that came up in our recent Unit Testing Workshop was: How do I distribute reusable test code such as Test Doubles and Mock Objects? This question caught me by surprise. It wasn’t something I had really thought a lot about. I had typically just been

Unit Testing

Unit Testing Workshop Lessons Learned

At the end of January, we ran a Unit Testing Workshop. It went well. We had 7 participants. They included a LabVIEW Champion, and several CLAs. Overall the reviews were positive, but it was clear that there were some things that could be improved for the next time. 1. The

Coding Philosophy

Coaching

What do all Olympic Athletes have in common? They all have coaches. They are all very high performers, yet they still need coaches. I think a lot of us think that we are really good at what we do and we bristle and resist when someone mentions coaching. It’s

Software tools , Resources

TDMS Headers

Our TDMS Headers has officially been published to the NI Tools Network. It makes it easier to read and write cluster of data as properties for tdms files. Simply pass it a cluster and it does the rest. Check it out on the NI Tools Network Check it out the

Book Reviews , Security

Click Here To Kill Everybody

This is the second Bruce Schneier book I have read. It is every bit as good as the first. This book is a commentary on the current state of cybersecurity (and the future) for what Bruce calls the Internet+. The Internet+ includes everything connected to the internet; not just servers,

Conferences

Why we sponsor GDevCon

We are proud to once again sponsor GDevCon again this year. GDevCon is an independent graphical developers conference held each year somewhere in Europe. This year it will be at CERN. You might ask why is GDevCon important? We already have NIWeek, NIDays, the CLA Summit, and various CLD Summits

Book Reviews

The Agile Samurai

I was first put onto this book by Fabiola. She mentioned the Inception Deck in one of her presentations. That caused me to do some research and stumble upon the book. If you haven’t heard about the inception deck, you can check it out here as well as in

Coding Philosophy

Philosophy of Code - Memento Mori

Another topic that came up in “Ego is the Enemy” is the Latin phrase “Memento Mori”. Translated literally it means “Remember you will die.” I kind of view it as the adult version of the millenial’s YOLO – “You only live once”. YOLO is all about hedonistic pleasure – do whatever

Book Reviews

Smart Marketing for Engineers

I saw Rebecca Geier talk at NI Week a few years ago. She was promoting her new book Smart Marketing to Engineers. I picked up a copy but didn’t get around to reading it until last year. I found it very insightful. The book starts off with some typical

Coding Philosophy

Philosophy of Coding: Ego

This is a continuation of my thoughts about philosophy and coding. It is an exploration of how the way we think about coding impacts the coding process and the code that we produce. This particular article is reflection upon a book i read a year or two ago called “Ego

Book Reviews

Book Review - Refactoring

This is a book I read a few years ago. It is a very useful book. It’s considered a classic in software engineering literature because it introduced the idea of code smells and because it gave names to a bunch of common refactorings. Code smells are things that indicate

Coding Philosophy

Philosophy of Coding: Planning

In this continuation of my philosophy in coding series, I want to talk about planning and the way we think about planning. Start with the end in mind Many of you probably recognize this phrase from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In it, Steven Covey does an exercise

Webinars

February 2020 Webinar

Mock Objects February 26, 11:00am MT I want to verify that my code uses some other object correctly. Sometimes the code you are testing interacts with some other component. Maybe it’s a database, a network connection, or a piece of hardware. This type of code can be really

Coding Philosophy

Fear and Motivation

In a previous post, I mentioned how our mindset influences how we write code. Here an example of a mantra in this case from pop (or sci-fi) culture and how it can influence the way we think about designing software. Fear is the Mind Killer “I must not fear. Fear

Book Reviews

El Alquimista

The Alchemist by Paul Cuehlo is a great book that I highly recommend. It is a great reminder to chase your dreams and ignore the naysayers. It also reminds us that having a dream is not the same as chasing it. If you have a dream get up and follow

Coding Philosophy , Resources

How to learn Computer Science

There is a group of us LabVIEW enthusiasts that get together in Boulder every couple of weeks for coffee. It’s pretty informal. It’s a chance for us to talk shop and catch up. Often someone will have some problem and together we will all brainstorm a solution. Recently

Book Reviews

Ego Is The Enemy And The Obstacle Is The Way

As I wrote in a previous post about philosophy and coding I was not always a big fan of philosophy. I viewed it as an academic pursuit, a bunch of eggheads sitting around thinking about thinking. I never saw the practical value. That is until a read a pair of

Goals

Goals for 2020

Mark Lund introduced me to a concept he called P.I.E. It was something he taught to all his team members. It was an acronym he used to remind them of what it takes to be successful. It has stuck with me because it is simple, easy to remember

Python , Book Reviews

Automate the Boring Stuff With Python

* NI recently added Python Integration to both LabVIEW and TestStand. * Danielle Jobe’s presentation at GDevCon last year and her hands-on at NI week this year were both on integrating LabVIEW and Python. * I had a job this year where there was potential for more work to be done but

Unit Testing

Unit Testing - Tips For Getting Started

It’s a new year, so it is a good time to start planning and setting some goals for this year. If you are not currently using unit testing, starting to use it would be a great goal for the new year. People often struggle when starting to learn unit

Goals

2019 Goal Setting Review

At the beginning of this year, I laid out some goals. Some of them I posted on here. Since it is the end of one year and the start of another, I wanted to just go back and review them and see where I ended up. That will help me

Coding Philosophy

Skills Pyramid

This post is just really to get feedback about an idea I have had floating around in my head. As a coach/consultant I often come into groups that are already doing software development. In order to best serve them, I have to meet them where they are. Sometimes figuring