Book Reviews - The SAS Workshops Blog

Wrong Way

Before you go believing all the AI hype, I recommend reading this book.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , Software Engineering

Wild West to Agile

We've all heard the terms "agile" and "waterfall", but what is the real history behind each? and how did we migrate from one to the other? Here is a firsthand account.

Unit Testing , Book Reviews , Software tools , Python

Python Testing with PyTest

I recently read the PyTest book. It is quite good. If you are looking to learn Python, I recommend checking out PyTest. Unit Tests are a great tool to help learning a new language.

Book Reviews , Security

Tracers In the Dark

This is a really interesting read about the history of tracing blockchain transactions.

Book Reviews , Python

Dead Simple Python

If you want to take a deep dive into Python and skip all the beginner tutorials that assume you don't know anything about programming, then this is the book for you!

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , DevOps

Are Your Lights On?

What is the real problem? Whose problem is it? Who has the power to fix it? and how do you motivate that person to fix the problem?

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

The Best Book on Legacy Code I've Read Yet

You have inherited a Legacy System, what do you do now? How do you manage a successful modernization effort?

Book Reviews

Training From the Back of the Room

When you lead training are you in the front of the room or the back? Does your training implement the 4 Cs?

Coding Philosophy , Book Reviews

Accidents in North American Climbing 2023

What can studying climbing accidents teach us about coding? It turns out a lot.

Book Reviews

The Right Stuff

If you heard Scott Kelly talk at NI Week several years ago, you may recognize this book. I finally got around to reading it.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy

How To Make Mistakes in Python

I stumbled upon this book recently. It was quite good. I highly recommend everyone (yes even LabVIEW Developers) read it. It is very insightful. It's also free and very short at 76 pages and it reads fast. There really is no excuse. I very much like the title.

Book Reviews

Waltzing With Bears

Risk management or crisis management, the choice is yours. This book will teach you proper risk management so you can avoid crisis management.

Book Reviews

Caste

Coding is much more about humans than technology. Understanding the human condition better makes you a better coder. This book is all about the human condition.

Book Reviews , Python

Python Workout

If you are looking to get more comfortable with Python, this is definitely a good place to start.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , Design Patterns

Domain-Driven Design Quickly

If you are likely for a primer to get started learning DDD, Domain Driven Design Quickly is a good starting point.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy

Technical Agile Coaching With The Samman Method

I recently read a very interesting book on coaching by Emily Bache. She has a unique perspective that is very interesting.

Book Reviews , Business

Go For No

The number one challenge faced by most LabVIEW Developers turned consultants is sales and marketing. This book can help with the sales part.

Book Reviews

Measuring History

"Measuring History" tells the history of National Instruments and the impact it has had on the world.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , DevOps

Thinking in Systems

This book is a recipe for social and organizational change. It is about predicting and influencing the complex systems we've built.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , DevOps

The Phoenix Project

The Phoenix Project is a must-read book for anyone who works in technology. If you have ever worked in a larger company you will immediately identify with the situation described at the beginning of the book. You have an overworked IT department that seems disorganized and is always behind on

Book Reviews , Software Engineering

Technical Debt In Practice

I met Julien Delange a few months ago. He runs a company called codiga.io It is a support tool to help developers write better code. It is a web-based tool that acts kind of like VI analyzer and will analyze your code and flag problems and make suggestions. It

Book Reviews

Bug Bounty BootCamp Book Review

Being a programmer, cybersecurity is an important topic. I’ve been interested in it for a while. I listen to Security Now and Darknet Diaries and have been to various hackathons. I even signed up for HackerOne. I felt like I’ve just been dabbling in it though. This book

Frameworks , Book Reviews

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