Articles by Michael Schwartz

In today’s world, computers are everywhere and in everything, as well as at the heart of our test equipment. If you would have told me 25 years ago that my oscilloscope would come with Windows® […]

You will usually hear me talking about all the great things that automation brings. And for the most part automation is good. But it is not without its drawbacks and so, with this article, I […]

What can be done with the big data we have been collecting? The metrology industry is sitting on mountains of collected data. So why is it that most of us have yet to find value […]

So what is good structure in software? What makes one language, design or architecture better than another? These are all very difficult questions to answer. So far, I have not found a litmus test; but […]

I was having a long conversation the other day with a fellow software engineer. One of the topics we talked about for hours was software life cycles and how metrology software is not like most […]

More and more of the hardware we have to automate comes standard with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) communication interface. Manufacturers are replacing the older RS-232 with USB; with its low price and high speed […]

What is the best software to use for automation? That is the age old question. I remember having this debate more than 20 years ago when I was working at White Sands Missile Range in […]

Today, less and less test equipment comes standard with a GPIB communication interface. Many don’t even offer it as an option. It wasn’t that long ago manufacturers included a GPIB interface standard on most test […]