A Call for Better LabVIEW Design Patterns

[crelf]

I am indeed. I remember telling my wife that, if I were to ever suggest that I was thinking of writing another book, she was to take my last book and hit me with it. Guess what she did last week? ☺

Seriously though, as this will be a collaborative effort – I expect that each contributor would pick a pattern or two that they’re most interested in, and I’ll act as an editor (which is a lot more work than it sounds – trust me!) I’ll also do the leg work with the publisher, marketing, etc.

I also expect that we’ll be leaning on information that’s already in the public domain – there’s no point reinventing the wheel, it’s more about application of the wheel – so there’ll be a lot of crediting where crediting is due.

[Daklu]

Ahh... so a working title would be something like, "Applying Common Design Patterns in Labview"?  It might be a good idea for the same contributor to write about patterns that are very similar so as to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each.

IMO one of the key strengths of Head First is that it takes you through the evolution of an application.  It looks like you're thinking of doing something similar.  We contributors will need to know the general structure of the application and the new requirement when it hits our chapter, so we know how to refactor it.  (This is no small task you're taking on as editor.  Trying to take content written by multiple authors and making it flow smoothly... it might be easier just to write it all yourself.)  Writing a catalog of Labview implementations similar to GoF would be much easier with multiple authors.  Less valuable as a learning resource, but easier to get out the door.  I'll contribute what I can either way.

[crelf]

Great – thanks for stepping up Dave.

[crelf]

btw Nate: I really enjoyed your presentation at the LabVIEW Architect Summit – well done!

[jgcode]

If I may make a suggestion: Why don't you start a new Group in the NI Communities for LabVIEW Design Patterns so all this (and future) information can be centralised and managed and isolated from other topics?

Also what about authoring a Head First LabVIEW Design Pattern Book? I always thought a LabVIEW book was missing in this series. I too like the series and the format - I own about 10+ HF books and ~6 other O'Reilly books, they are a great publishing house of technical information. However, if you read the intro to HF books you will see the average turn around is 6 months now (as opposed to 1 year a while ago) tho which is pretty quick.

[nancyj]

Count me in as well.  Technically "I'm out of the office", but I am teaching back-to-back OO courses, so there are no OOut OOf the OOffic issue to day.  And yea Dave, I always plug Head First.  As well as OO Thought Processes and GoF.  I'll take any chapter, but really want to dive into applications for the Visitor pattern!

[crelf]

Fabo Nancy - sounds great!

Okay folks, I'll be at the Peer2Peer lunch event on Thursday (see announcement Eli just made here) - I encourage those who are going to be at NI-Week to stop by so we can talk more about the idea.

[Elijah_K]

Thanks for the plug Chris - hope to see everyone there.  I'm excited by the conversation on this thread and I would be happy to contribute to a book on behalf of NI - I think I could also get a number of wireworkers from the Systems Engineering and R&D groups to weigh in. 

[Elijah_K]

On a related note, I wanted to take a minute to point out a OO command architecture I've been experimenting with, which I just posted here: http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-12645. As I explain in the document, it's still in work (but look for an incarnation of it to appear on a touch screen in the LabVIEW Zone @ NI Week).

[crelf]

Awesome Eli - thanks mate. See you next week ☺