Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

[parthabe]

Hi All,

I thought this would prop-up some interesting discussion in this board.

Who among us are native LabVIEW developers [ I mean to say LabVIEW is the first Programming Language they ve started to work upon in their career ] & who among us are migrators to LV [ from C, C++, etc., ].

I m a Native LabVIEW programmer wiring from LV 6i -->> LV 7.0 -->> LV 7.1 till now.

Maybe you experts can come out more elaborate on the cutting-down of the Project development time when you switched to LV from any text-based PL forn the same kind of projects, or the ease & flexibility of H/W programming with LV, and things like that...

It ll be of more help for people searching NI for those kinda things in future.

[TiTou]

Hi Partha,

I am also a native LV developper.
After a couple of years using LabVIEW (from 5.1 to 8.20) I do love it and wouldn't like to have to use text based language, but I must admit that sometimes I feel that not knowing other programming language is drawback.

Well... Now that I start thinking about it, the real point might not be that I am mono-"programming"-language but more that I haven't been trained as a software engineer, but as a thermal engineer. This explains why I do not know any text based language.  😉

[shoneill]

I've always had an interest in programming.

I remember programming on an Amstrad CPC 464 (Schneider for the mainland Europeans out there).  Wasn't very good at it though.

Then I remember doing Pascal and C in college, both on a VAX network.  We covered some basic stuff, like structures and functions, but never got to the "interesting" stuff.  Since I was studying as an Analytical Scientist, It wasn't a formal programming training anyhow.

Then came LabVIEW.  I grasped it fairly quick (perhaps doe to my limited exposure to text-based languages).  A natural progression was Office VBA, which actually helped a lot to understand using ActiveX under LV.  Tried Java a few times, but found it ultimately unwieldy.

I prefer to program in LabVIEW, but some things are still done quicker in other languages.  Oh, I've also done a bit of good ol' "DOS" Batch programming scripting (under WInXP!).  It's actually surprising how much can be achieved on this level......

So short version : more or less LabVIEW native.....

Shane.

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Migrator:

BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, Assembly, PLC Ladder Logic, C, C++, VBA, LabWindows CVI

                                              LabVIEW (and nothing else these days)

[tbob]

Started with Fortran77 (WOW, I'm an old guy), then proceeded with Basic, Pascal, 808x assembly, Z80 assembly, UNIX shell, C, C++, Ladder Logic, HPVEE, Labview 5.1.1, Visual Basic, Visual C, embedded VB, embedded VC, TestStand, LabWindows, Labview 6,7,8..... and now I do strictly Labview.  I wouldn't go back to the others for anything.  Sure was hard going from Labview to VB, but my job required it.

[TiTou]

I heard a lot of joke from NI people about HPVEE... Was it that bad ?
How was the switch from HPVEE to LabVIEW 5.1.1  ??

[altenbach]

It all started with FORTRAN_IV in the early seventies. Of course we programmed on punchcards and every week or so we traveled to the next city government building where they had a room filled with one gigantic computer, having 32kB or memory if I remember right. Online debugging was impossible. Ah, the good old times. 🙂

In the late seventies, I wrote some very useful programs on my TI-58 .

Later, I programmed a lot of Fortran on a PDP-11 and similar beasts. Anyone remember the line editors and tektronix vector displays? Learned some Pascal and Forth. Later used the VAX-11/780 unde VMS, even programmed some elaborate VT-100 UI using DIGITAL_Command_Language to make the Fortran code easier to use. For more advanced data analysis, I programmed in SAS . All on plain serial terminals with limited graphics capabilities.

My LabVIEW experience started with 4.0 on a 100MHz Pentium with 32MB of RAM. Suddenly, I was able to do anything I ever wanted! Programs started working on the first try and each program basically got a graphical UI for free once the diagram was in place. Never looked back! 🙂

[Darren]

I started programming in LabVIEW (v5.0.1 in January 1999), and I've never used any other programming language.  Why mess with perfection?

-D

[tbob]

TiTou: 

When I started with HPVEE (before Labview), I thought it was great.  It was graphical, but the graphics were nothing but boxes with titles.  Very boorish looking.  However, it was still graphical, not text.  One thing it had from the beginning is the auto selection tool.  So I got used to this right from the start.  Then I moved to Labview 5.1.1 because of a change of jobs.  Labview looked far superior, was easier to follow, but it didn't have the auto selection tool yet.  I had to have one hand on the Tab key and the other on the mouse.  I hated that.  I wanted to stick with VEE.  Then I started noticing the many things that I could do with Labview much easier than with VEE.  The graphics were easier to follow.  Another major difference was that VEE had an execution in/out node in all of its boxed functions.  This meant you didn't have to rely on data flow programming.  You could wire an execution wire to force the execution order.  This was convenient, I wanted to stick with VEE again.  Slowly I warmed up to Labview because of the graphics and the many more built in functions.  I learned how to use the Error In and Error Out to replace VEE's Execution In and Execution Out.  I was then sold on Labview.  Errors were not that easy to handle in VEE.  Also, VEE's loops are a joke.  There is no loop structure like in Labview.  You have to wire the loop.  If I recall correctly, there was some type of loop start function and a loop continue funtion.  The loop was not clearly visible as in the loop frame in Labview.  You had to follow the wiring from start to end of loop.

Altogether, I don't consider VEE a joke, it is pretty good actually.  But Labview is light years above VEE.

[Joe_H]

LV native and I have loved every minute of it. However I am now being forced to learn C++ and VHDL. I do not mind VHDL but I really hate C++.