VIWeek 2020/Confessions of a Retired Superhero

Confessions of a Retired Superhero
Conference	VIWeek 2020
Presenters	Matt Pollock

Confessions of a Retired Superhero by Matt Pollock

Crazy projects demand crazy solutions. Crazy solutions create crazy bugs. Come learn from spectacular failures (or near failures) that have threatened to torpedo other projects so yours will be safe from heroics.

Start Time: May 18, 2020, 8:00 PM GMT+2

LabVIEW Man Lyrics

How does a text-based, coder, with a two-core and a
Touchpad, dropped in the middle of a real sad
Spot with only dial up, without the competence or confidence required
Grow up to be a hero of a wirer?

The installer's founding father without a bother
Got a lot farther by working a lot harder
By being a lot smarter
By being a self-starter
By fourteen, they placed him in charge of a python parser

And every day while strings were being concatenated and formatted
Away across the spaces, he struggled and kept his guard up
Inside, he was longing for something to be a part of
The brother was ready to click, drag, quick drop or borrow

Coronavirus came, and isolation reigned
Our man saw his revenue drip, dripping down the drain
Put a mouse in his hand, connected it to his brain
And he wrote his first VI, a controller for his train

Well, the word got around, they said 'This IDE's insane, see'
Took up a collection just to pay the license fee
"Get online education, don't forget from whence you came, and
The world's gonna know your name. What's your name, man?"

"Alexander LabVIEW Man.
My name is Alexander LabVIEW Man."
'There's a million dependencies to load,
But just you wait…just you wait….'

When he was ten his codebase split, errors hit, debt-ridden
Two years later, see Alex and his laptop bug-ridden
Half-working it is so sick, you can't click

And Alex got better but his laptop crashed quick

Moved it to a VM, the VM committed suicide
Left him with nothin' but ruined pride, something new inside
A voice saying, "Alex, get source control for yourself"
He started refactorin' and learnin' every pattern on the shelf

There would've been nothin' left to do
For someone less astute
Code would've been unable to compute
Without highlight execution
Started workin, clickin' on a bluetooth without a cord
Buildin' frameworks and templates avoiding tech debt he can't afford
Scammin' for every blog he can get his hands on
Plannin' for the future see him now as he stands on
The brink of a sprint headed for a new plan
With LabVIEW you can be a new man

With LabVIEW you can (just you wait) be a new man
With LabVIEW you can (just you wait) be a new man
With LabVIEW you can be a new man
-With LabVIEW
--LabVIEW
---Just you wait!

Alexander LabVIEW Man (Alexander LabVIEW Man)
LabVIEW's scripting the things for you (scripting the things for you)
You know how to shut down
You finally learned to write unit tests
Oh, Alexander LabVIEW Man (Alexander LabVIEW Man)
When they code review for you
Will they know what you overrode?
Will they know you rewrote the code?
Now G will never be the same

The code is in the repo now
CI is gonna build it (Just you wait)
Dependency injection
Comin' up from the bottom (Just you wait)
His customers deployed his app
And then they forgot him

<Stephen and Allen>
We AF with it

<Delacor people>
D-QMH with it

<Darren>
Me? I work on it

<Anybody who wants>
Me? I love it

<Jeff K>
And me? I'm the damn fool that made it

There's a million dependencies to load
But just you wait!

What's your name man?

Alexander LabVIEW Man!

See also

• Debugging

External links

• Link to better quality version of LabVIEW Man video
• National Instruments (NI) Website