From Friday, April 19th (11:00 PM CDT) through Saturday, April 20th (2:00 PM CDT), 2024, ni.com will undergo system upgrades that may result in temporary service interruption.
We appreciate your patience as we improve our online experience.
BreakPoint
Good message I have seen on LinkedIN..
@Ray.R wrote:
In closing... I'd like to share this thought.... it might help clear up what I was attempting to say:
Let's say you need to hire a lawyer because you've been accused of a crime you did not commit and you may end up in jail for life.
Who would you choose to defend you?
Here are the choices:
1) MacGiver... who has never studied law.. but is willing to help you for free. Knows something about defending people from tv shows..
or
2) A savvy lawyer who has a perfect track record but is expensive
Option 3) For that case you hire the "A" Team. 
@JÞB wrote:
@Ray.R wrote:
In closing... I'd like to share this thought.... it might help clear up what I was attempting to say:
Let's say you need to hire a lawyer because you've been accused of a crime you did not commit and you may end up in jail for life.
Who would you choose to defend you?
Here are the choices:
1) MacGiver... who has never studied law.. but is willing to help you for free. Knows something about defending people from tv shows..
or
2) A savvy lawyer who has a perfect track record but is expensive
Option 3) For that case you hire the "A" Team.
Ah, my childhood is coming back to me. A-Team, MacGyver, and Matlock were watched a lot in my home.
Anyways, here are my 2 cents:
We were all newbies at some point. At that time, most of us were MacGyvers, doing whatever it took to get the job done. Was it pretty? Was it efficient? HECK NO! But it worked. Those of us who learned better through those experiences turn into the "professionals".
Yes, Jeff, the new generation has is so much better. There are actually people around to teach them better. We hired some new grads this year and they are now in LabVIEW understanded where I was after 3-4 years of figuring out on my own. I claim that LAVA taught me LabVIEW. And these are engineering students of various kinds (Avionics and Mechanical). Not any Computer Science people.
As far as teaching Software Engineering to LabVIEW developers, I find that the entrenched LV guys are the problems. These newbies actually listen to me when I show them a better way to do something and show them why to use a reuse library and SCC. But those old fogies (the ones who refuse to use quick drop and/or auto tool) just will not listen, even when I show them a much better solution.
Ok, that was probably more around a quarter, but whatever. I'm working in my in-laws' basement this week.
Are Ally McBeal, Remington Steele, and Matlock all not available? What about the crew from LA Law or Boston Legal? How much does Perry Mason charge?!?
Who's the judge? If it's Harry Anderson, I'm not worried at all!
(Full disclosure: I had to Google some of the names. Wasn't into the lawyer shows that much, Night Court, however, was one of my favorite shows!)
Jeff
@crossrulz wrote:
@JÞB wrote:
@Ray.R wrote:
In closing... I'd like to share this thought.... it might help clear up what I was attempting to say:
Let's say you need to hire a lawyer because you've been accused of a crime you did not commit and you may end up in jail for life.
Who would you choose to defend you?
Here are the choices:
1) MacGiver... who has never studied law.. but is willing to help you for free. Knows something about defending people from tv shows..
or
2) A savvy lawyer who has a perfect track record but is expensive
Option 3) For that case you hire the "A" Team.
Ah, my childhood is coming back to me. A-Team, MacGyver, and Matlock were watched a lot in my home.
Anyways, here are my 2 cents:
We were all newbies at some point. At that time, most of us were MacGyvers, doing whatever it took to get the job done. Was it pretty? Was it efficient? HECK NO! But it worked. Those of us who learned better through those experiences turn into the "professionals".
Yes, Jeff, the new generation has is so much better. There are actually people around to teach them better. We hired some new grads this year and they are now in LabVIEW understanded where I was after 3-4 years of figuring out on my own. I claim that LAVA taught me LabVIEW. And these are engineering students of various kinds (Avionics and Mechanical). Not any Computer Science people.
As far as teaching Software Engineering to LabVIEW developers, I find that the entrenched LV guys are the problems. These newbies actually listen to me when I show them a better way to do something and show them why to use a reuse library and SCC. But those old fogies (the ones who refuse to use quick drop and/or auto tool) just will not listen, even when I show them a much better solution.
Ok, that was probably more around a quarter, but whatever. I'm working in my in-laws' basement this week.
Ok, as an old fogie (I just had another "what, I can't be that old!" birthday) and a LabVIEWer that started out with bad software engineering practices (hey, even the examples included with LabVIEW 2.5 tended to enforce those bad habits), that has also had to follow after folks with even worse skills, I understand this thread from many angles. The McGyver reference, I think, was to find a "jack of all trades" (officially a title "JOAT" in a scifi series I'm drawing a blank on), that was able to fix just about anything. He didn't McGyver it, but knew how technology worked. To many, particularly those that aren't techo-nerds, McGyver's "fixes" imply a innovative outlook and understanding. It is one of those "words" that has morphed into new meanings with a different emotion. Hacker is another that comes to mind. When I was originally a "hacker" it was someone that had a deep understanding of computers and their technology, and liked to poke around in them software and hardware, to see how they ticked, what they could be made to do outside of their original design parameters. Were the programs written to do this elegant examples of software engineering? Not often, but then software engineering was pretty nacent then too.
So the bottom line, you might want someone who has started out "the hard way" in LabVIEW, if, with sufficient experience and positive exposure to better methods, is not just hacking together fragile, unsupportable code. The problem with the "formal" path is that it may end up producing someone that is pretty good at creating a clean, elegant program, but may have little deep understanding of the target. While many LabVIEW programs are now created that may never see any other hardware than that they run on, in my world, knowledge of instrumentation, interfaces, protocols, etc., are as important as the actual program written to use them.
Rarely use auto tool (had too recently in troubleshooting code remotely using "Dameware" as I had a hard time configuring to let certain local keyboard "stuff" properly execute on the target machine), still tab through the list, usually while actually using it as NOP while I process what I really want to do at that point! Haven't used quick drop much either. I move from computer to computer, frequently set up for other developers.
My $0.02. Although my primary function is LV I could not do what I do without my 20+ yr hardware background. Almost daily I need to build a circuit, doodad or thingamabob to make my tests work the way they need to.
And I would not have been interested in LV if not for my hardware background. After hammering away at machine and assembly code, BASIC and enough C to be really dangerous I simply wasn't enthusiastic about software. I liked the *idea* of software and what it could do but just hated typing lines of text and punching in numbers for hours on end. When I saw LV for the first time I wanted to learn it. Software that's written like a schematic. Love at first sight. That was 13 years ago. No going back. Hardware+LV = match made in heaven. 
Well said Putnam,
That is why I stated way earlier: "it depends on your definition of MacGiver".
I'm referring to this:
@LV_Pro wrote:
To many, particularly those that aren't techo-nerds, McGyver's "fixes" imply a innovative outlook and understanding.
So using the rest of your definition, and pretending that I know nothing about technology and the exaggeration from Hollywood (does that mean I should stop watching MythBusters?), then (cough) yeah... I can see that every team would want to have a MacGiver.. So based on that definition, a MacGiver would be highly desirable. I didn't realize that Thelma was not the only one that cherished him.
My dad taught me welding and electrical / electronics at a young age. I could already tell that what the A-Team and MacGiver were doing was not realistic. I knew the difference between using a torch to cut versus welding... That's why I was not impressed with a MacGiver... But now, I see the other side of the coin...
Spoiler
BUT!!! That could also be interpreted as the blind leading the blind... but lets not go there, after all, a new year is soon upon us
On a much better topic: Happy Belated Birthday Putnam!!! You must be at least 50 by now!!??!! 
Rumors that the Cheshire Cat reopened for Christmas. I get to treat you to a cold beer when you're in town. 
Best wishes to you & your family for the new year! 
