The SAS Workshops Blog

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

Coding Philosophy , OOP

Command Query Separation of Class Methods

In reading Micheal Feather’s book on Legacy Code, on page 147 it mentions the idea of command and query separation. A method should be a command or query, but not both. A command is a method that can modify the state of the object, but doesn’t return a

Book Reviews , 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

Sam On Joel , Coding Philosophy

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

Continuous Integration , How to

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

Sam On Joel , Coding Philosophy

Back to Basics

So here is another article from Joel on Software. In this article, titled Back to the Basics, Joel talks about the importance of understanding how some lower-level things (like how strings are stored and memory management) work. It’s a bit of a rant. His conclusion is that you need

Book Reviews , Legacy Code

Legacy Code First Aid Kit

In general I hate digital only books. I much prefer physical books, but this one, like Dive into Design Patterns is worth making an exception for. Nicolas did a great job with this book. It covers 14 different tools to help get you started working with legacy code. If you

Kata , Legacy Code

Yahtzee Kata

The Yahtzee Kata is a common refactoring kata. You can see a version of it on Emily Bauche’s Github. As a refactoring kata, it requires some starting code. Emily’s page contains starting code for a lot of languages, but not LabVIEW. So I took it upon myself to

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy

Peopleware

This book was recommended to me many years ago by a friend, but for some reason it took me a while to get around to reading it. I read it immediately after reading “Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea” and a lot of the ideas seemed the same. Tom

Coding Philosophy , Book Reviews

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

Conferences , Announcements

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/

Book Reviews

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