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How has LabVIEW made you better?

 


@Ray.R wrote:

By helping other on this forum.

 

Of ALL the forums for programming languages, this is by far the best one.  I learned a great deal from this forum as well.

And LabVIEW has helped me become a better "text-based" programmer by optimizing the code as we can do in LabVIEW.

 


I bet if this idea is implemented you will see this forum degrade. I have been using the Internet since the early 90s and it was all very high quality. Then they let AOL in and the rest is history.

 

Edit: But I did kudo that idea!

 

=====================
LabVIEW 2012


0 Kudos
Message 11 of 33
(13,539 Views)

I have been working with LabVIEW since the mid '90s and it has become my language of choice. I have a CS degree and spent the first many years of my career writing test automation systems in C. I also spent a few years working on realtime embedded systems using both C and assembler. At the time I was wearing two hats, one as a firmware developer and one as a firmware tester. A few years later I switched companies and focused on designing and building a large automated test system. This was my first real experience with LabVIEW and I was instantly hooked. I found I could develop applications much faster in LabVIEW than any other language. (Crappy typing skills don't work well in text based languages) Also, being in software/firmware test I would see lots of technicians who were expected to write code or fresh grads with no real programming experience. I found LabVIEW was a great language to teach people who were not experienced programmers. This enabled me to get more work done.

 

Fast forward several years to now and you can see that I have developed into a full fledged LabVIEW zealot. I have introduced LabVIEW into my current company and have established it as our language of choice for test automation. Early at the company I was able to create several tests very quickly which advanced our testing efforts significantly. Those early successes allowed me to build a team of experienced LabVIEW programmers and have allow us the freedom to develop some very interesting systems. My company only uses LabVIEW internally yet have fully embraced it as a development platform. Our primary team of three people consists of two Certified LabVIEW Architects and one Certified LabVIEW Developer. In addition, I am a LabVIEW Champion and another member is also a Certified TestStand Developer.

 

LabVIEW has also provided me with some great experiences outside of work as well. I have worked with the FIRST program for the past few years. I always find joy in helping the kids build their robots and find enjoyment working in technical fields.

 

Through my involvement with LabVIEW I have met some great people, had some GREAT times (you have to love NI Week) and built a very successful career.



Mark Yedinak
Certified LabVIEW Architect
LabVIEW Champion

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot
Message 12 of 33
(13,533 Views)

Programming With C++, my students did'nt react positively!!! They had trouble!

I started using Labview with translating text to Arabic Language, my sutents changed completely.They liked the graphic programming with labview. WE started doing many things in Process cont using Labview!!! in Arabic!!!

We are ready to share with others.

  (ni.com   المنتدى العربي)

Or    Labview.Tech.Officelive.Com

Or Hamada Home page

Sincerely

http://labview.tech.officelive.com
Message 13 of 33
(13,454 Views)

Thank you BNacer!

 

That story shows yey another example of how LabVIEW tends toward being a multi-lingual by its very nature. LV is to software as pictograms are to street signs. No syntax, only information.

 

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
Message 14 of 33
(13,444 Views)

I interviewed for a position with a fortune 500 company on September 10th 2001.  Considering the events of the following day, I never expected to hear back.  On the 18th, much to my surprise, I accepted a contract with the company and, again, much to my surprise, found out that the position I'd accepted required programming automated tests in LabVIEW!  I hated "programming"  all those semi-colons, syntax errors, indentions and typographical errors!  Don't get me wrong- I was fluent at times in Basic, Pascal, Fortran, C++, and yes "Turtle Logo".  But, maybe I'm a bit dyslexic or, it could be that my 9th grade Russain language teacher could not read my handwriting so I learned to type on a cryllic keyboard.  Programming was tedious and not so rewarding that I'd choose it for a career.

 

That day, Sep 18th 2001, I saw LabVIEW 5.1 for the first time.   The basics (wires, terminals, FP, BD, Connector pane, vi Hierarchy, and icon) were intuitively understandable! I took to LabVIEW like a duck to water!  It actually took me 9 months to write a bug that involved missing a semi-colon! (and that was in a string to write to a GPIB function!)

 

Fast forward a decade.  Today I represent a leading test solution provider as the lead LabVIEW developer!  Programming in LabVIEW seems effortless!  My skills continue to improve!  The IDE continues to advance.  And, I am challenged and rewarded in my career every day. 

 

My professional growth has been supported by my employment as a Certified LabVIEW Developer, and participation in the NI Forums.  Moreover, I LIKE "programming" and cannot imagine a career without it!


"Should be" isn't "Is" -Jay
Message 15 of 33
(13,329 Views)

 TO Dr. James Truchard

President, CEO, and Cofounder NI LabVIEW

 

Dear,

 

I'm a user of Labview and appreciate  very well what is done with this program.

Our students prefer and appreciate  Labview(Graphical Proramming) from other programming languages... and if it is in Arabic it will be better.

My questions are :

Do we hope to see (one day) the  Arabic Language used as the Korean Language for example?

In my opinion the Arabic market is more important then the Korean, for example.

I want to know if the first steps,  to translate labview to the Arabic Language, should be done by those who are using Labview, Arabic governments  or from your administration.?

 

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Hamada (Labview lover)

http://labview.tech.officelive.com
Message 16 of 33
(13,313 Views)

Hi all,

 

I am quite an oldtimer in programming. When I started studying physics in East-German City of Rostock in 1977 we had to attend a programming course using Fortran and providing our code on punch cards. At that time planning and develloping was done with paper and pencil and going to the punching machine was like being sure it has to work (which in fact did'nt in most cases...). Weird when imagining that with todays eyes.

Later, on Z80-based machines running CP/M or AMCA-80, I used a kind of BASIC, Turbo-Pascal and inline-Assembler.

After the Berlin Wall came down I was given a hint towards a graphical programming language, LabVIEW 3 at that time.

Since than I am on LabVIEW and have used it in all Jobs I had since than.

When the tasks one is attempting to tackle are not very simple and/or very similar to what is known and provided, good programming easily becomes quite complicated. There's the desired algorithm, there's error handling, user guidance, unit tests and more. A lot of details to document and remember for an aging brain 😉

Here's where LabVIEW makes my live much easier. I can start with sketching the intended workflow, the input & output, some basic requirements and an architecture for the program. Than I can start a top-down-approach and whenever a given functionality is reached and/or my code had become too complex I can structure it, create SubVIs and make it easier to read and fit onto one single screen. And as I always take the few seconds to make some documentation when creating SubVIs and to draw an individual icon having a set of internal rules on coloring schemes.

So I can keep my projects (some quite large ones with about 1000 VIs, CTLs and external code like DLLs or exes called via Active-X) readable and understandable even for me.

Thanks to LabVIEW I can still do creating test applications, test sequencers and automation tools. I also use text-based scripting tools like AutoIT, but rather quickly come to my individual limits when using that.LabVIEW has moved the limits of what I can achieve far beyound what the where when using text-based programming.

 

Greetings from Germany!

--

Uwe

 

Message 17 of 33
(13,231 Views)

LabVIEW is the ideal language for anyone that writes software that others use... put simply.

Working as a research assistant at my university for 3 years, I have made countless data acquisition, modeling, and data analysis programs.

 

Without the ease of setting up an intuitive GUI in LabVIEW, my co-workers and advisors would have had a much harder time trying to navigate around the software.

It is great for all types of scientific and engineering applications, for both the creator and the user.

Cory K
Message 18 of 33
(13,185 Views)

LabVIEW has helped to extend my career.  I am probably older than many of the contributors here; I am looking forward to retirement in not too many years (I hope).  But I need to keep working for now, so I need to keep my skills current.  A few years ago, I realized that much of the knowledge that made me valuable and sought-after 10 or 15 years ago is completely obsolete.

 

I am a metrologist, and have worked in that field for over 40 years.  Over the last 10-15 years, there has been more interest in having the instrumentation I work with and build to be automated--I don't build instruments any more, I build systems of instruments for data acquisition, logging, and analysis.  On several occasions, I had to bring other people onto the job just to write LabVIEW code for me.  I saw the value of LabVIEW, but I thought, "Well, those guys are specialists, I'll build the hardware and they can write the code."

 

But once I had to buy a LabVIEW package for a part-time developer.  When the LabVIEW box arrived at my office, I tucked it under my arm and started down the stairs to the lab, to deliver it to the developer.  Between my office on the 3rd floor and the lab in the basement, I got two job offers!!  People saw that LabVIEW box under my arm, and said "Hey, Ed, you program LabVIEW?  I've got a job you can do for me. . ."

 

Well, shortly after that I began studying LabVIEW on my own time, then I got my employer to pay for the Basics 1 and 2 classes.  Now I am responsible for code development and refactoring for the ground support equipment for a spaceflight project, and I have another developer working under my direction.  I am studying for my CLD this year, and I hope to make LabVIEW a larger part of my work in the future.

 

So I would say that LabVIEW has made me a better employee and extended my usefulness to my employers.

 

Ed

 

 

Edward Motts
Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer
Message 19 of 33
(13,129 Views)

EMOTTS wrote

 


....Between my office on the 3rd floor and the lab in the basement, I got two job offers!!  People saw that LabVIEW box under my arm, and said "Hey, Ed, you program LabVIEW?  I've got a job you can do for me. . ."

 

 

Well, shortly after that I began studying LabVIEW on my own time......

 


Too bad you were still declining at the time of the incident. (from the third floor to the basement)  Imagine how many offerers you would have had to pass up on your way to the 20th floor!

 

GREAT story (OK, PUNish me) Smiley Very Happy

 


"Should be" isn't "Is" -Jay
Message 20 of 33
(13,070 Views)