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Here's an "oldie but goodie" that made a lasting impression on me and I thought others would enjoy it. I still find the writing style to be humorous and engaging. "The Code of Abibarshim" -- which appears at the end of the linked page -- makes excellent recommendations, but I cannot say I entirely agree with all of them. Take the first one, for starters. I sense it is not so much that the name changed but that old names were allowed to persist, unchanged. As long as all instances of the old name are found and updated, I sense there is very little cause for concern. But I've already said too much. Do read the whole article! Why not take a few minutes and enjoy from some light-hearted reading? What did you like? What, if anything, would you recommend changing in his 10 conclusions?
Credit: As best I have been able to verify, this was originally credited to Paul Pendragon and published in "Production Engineering", July, 1981.
Beware the Wrath of Abibarshim!
I, Abibarshim, Great King, King of Kings, Ruler of Kish, Babil, Agade and Sankhar, and of the regions across the Hilla, conqueror of Ninevah, destroyer of Sepharia, having striven mightily and met with grief, lay down this Code that ye may not also strive mightily and meet with grief, nor fall flat on thy ass.
For I, Abibarshim, King of Kings, and all that, did buy many Aethyopeans and hire many artisans and scribes and masons and Makers of Engines and Designers of Buildings. And great was their craft and great their number, which was one hundred and forty four thousand, give or take a few job-shoppers. Yea, they did strive mightily, too, for they knew what would happen if they strove not mightily. And the name of my capital improvement project was the Tower of Babil.
Yea, great was their craft and wonderful to behold what the Designers of Buildings wrought on the papyrus. All who looked thereon did marvel at their genius. I, Abibarshim, did also look thereon and did declare their designs to have much nift.
But many days did pass, and many times did the moon wax and wane, and the tower was not yet builded.
So I, Abibarshim, King of Kings, did hie me to the palace by the Arakhtu where dwelt the Designers of Buildings and Makers of Engines. And there I found not Designers of Buildings and Makers of Engines, but Drinkers of Coffee and Tellers of Tales (whom men call hurlers of bull dung). So I vented my royal spleen, which did perturb them mightily.
"Look here, O King, etc.," said the Chief of the Makers of Engines. "Some things can't be rushed. If thou wantest us to get thy bloody tower builded on time, then thou hadst better give us a little respect. For canst thou build thy tower without us?"
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 06 2020, @10:04PM (4 children)
I totally get the LabVIEW hate but most people like you are just inflexible line-coders throwing their baby's first LabVIEW fits because investing an hour or two in a learning curve is too much hassle. I suppose Simulink is also for pussies? Why use Reaktor when you could write all your real-time audio modules in C++?
The only reason why I am suggesting LabVIEW is because it's a visual puzzle and as such will be more fun for me because I'm not in the mood to stare at lines of words all damn day. Maybe tomorrow, sure. Actually that's a good idea, to write a generic free of cost public domain device control framework for serial and GPIB, something I've wanted to do for awhile. And also easily doable. Problem is that a GPIB adapter and device are needed for debugging GPIB and I'm too Jewish to procure them. Don't even get me started on Modbus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @10:26PM
You're better off using Scratch. At least they are honest and up front about the fact that they are a toy language for people who don't know their ass from a thread or socket.
If you're just messing around, sure knock yourself out. Like I said, cabin fever makes us do all kinds of crazy stuff we usually end up looking back on thinking "boy, that was pretty stupid, what was I thinking?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @10:34PM (2 children)
I forgot to add: You're accusing me of hating on it because I don't want to spend the effort on the learning curve? Are you shitting me? The whole problem with it is that there IS NO LEARNING CURVE! A fucking monkey can write a LabVIEW program, and that's the problem. And National Instruments is just as bad as Mathworks: we'll charge you a couple thousand for the license, plus another thousand a year for "software maintenance", and is your code really shitty? Don't worry, for another thousand bucks you can buy a license for our De-shittifier module that will make your code less shitty (plus a few hundred more for annual maintenance).
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 06 2020, @11:12PM (1 child)
Actually although I'm going to be called a total fucking shill, NI has just released a beta of their free community edition (for personal/hobbyist use) with all the features of pro and with goodies geared toward shit like Arduinos and Pi's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2020, @06:02PM
No, I don't think you're a shill, nor do I think worse of you for playing around with it. It is interesting they have a community edition, but I will cast my jaundiced eye upon it as it feels to me to be more like the playbook of Solidworks, Mathworks, Microsoft, etc. where the first hit is free (e.g., student editions) to lock you in. You can probably do quite a bit with an Arduino or Pi with this and have a lot of fun, and I now suspect that my low end arbitrary waveform generator is probably something like that programmed in LabVIEW. However, don't build up anything important in my lab and base it on LabVIEW or I'll kick you in the nuts (or forever bind you to maintaining and reprogramming it as needed; or kick you in the nuts, then forever bind you).
I do think well of this, but only within the confines of what it is good at, which is cobble something together to quickly get data, but tear it down when you're done. You mentioned Simulink. Simulink is great for doing what its good at, which is designing control systems and other things by simulating them. But as a programming language? No. Mathworks has been trying to get into the LabVIEW space with Simulink, and no, I object for not only the same reasons, but Mathworks is even worse with their nickel-and-diming. "You want to do what? Oh, well you need to purchase this toolbox here for a modest fee."