The SAS Workshops Blog (Page 7)

Simplicity of Design

I recently read XP Explained. It had a section on page 109 where it talked about simplicity. I often talk about the importance of simplicity. In fact, it’s on my list of fundamental assumptions about coding. In XP Explained, Kent Beck lists 4 criteria to evaluate how simple a

Book Reviews

Sandworm

Given all the stuff going on in Ukraine right now, this is a highly relevant book. The author tracks down a group of Russian Hackers called Sandworm (a reference to Dune). They are part of the GRU. They were responsible for a variety of attacks, mostly centered around Ukraine and

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy

XP Explained

This book is considered a classic for a reason. It’s inspired a lot of coders over the years. I think the first time I had heard about it was from Stephen Loftus Mercer talking about pair programming. I’ve heard a lot about XP over the years since then

Software tools , Frameworks , OOP

Rename AF Message

I inherited a project written using Actor Framework recently. I started to do a little refactoring to make it easier to add some of the changes I needed to make, following Kent Beck’s idea of “First make the change easy, then make the easy change.” What is in a

Book Reviews , OOP

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

Conferences

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

Software Engineering , Coding Philosophy

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

Book Reviews

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

Software tools , Linux

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

Continuous Integration , How to

More GitLab Runner Troubleshooting Tips

I’ve been writing a lot lately about Continuous Integration and using GitLab Runner. It’s really nice when it works and it works 90% of the time, but issues do pop up occasionally. They can be a pain to troubleshoot. I previously wrote about how to run GitLabRunner as

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

Goals

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

Continuous Integration , How to , SCC

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

Continuous Integration , How to , SCC

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

Continuous Integration , How to , SCC

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.

Book Reviews

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.

Coding Philosophy

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

Coding Philosophy

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

Coding Philosophy

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

Book Reviews

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

Unit Testing , How to , Coding Philosophy

How I use Test-Driven Development (TDD)

A lot of people out there are very dogmatic about Test Driven Development. There’s a lot rules and a lot of very strong opinions. If you don’t believe me, go check out Twitter. While on Twitter, I saw GeePaw Hill’s Ten I statements about TDD. It inspired

Conferences

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

Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

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

Book Reviews

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

Coding Philosophy

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