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Certification
ATM Review
There is also quite a bit of luck involved. Do you intuitively chose the right approach or is your approach coming back with a vengeance about two hours in and making things difficult? Some days you just can't seem to think straight on a day ... also not helpful.
You could have a look and practice using the vi analyzer: link, click me
Once you've made yourself familiar with it and know how to quickly set it up with the warnings which are important to you it is a great tool to quickly find mishaps.
Another thing that you can practice is fast-coding ... you will love quick-drop if you are not using it yet. The two weeks before my CLA I was practicing the opening of my exam (see attachment). What you see in that project took 40 min. The CLA is obviously quite different in that I could stop coding at that point and just add state after state and write documentation for the next three hours (and as I haven't got my results yet I also don't know if I can recommend that approach to anyone else) but it means that I can rapidly drop structurse and basic code. It's worth practicing!
When you got your CLD did you just stick with one architecture you were comfortable with or did you base the architecture on the requirements? I'm thinking of just sticking with the producer/consumer approach as it seems to be broad enough to handle all all the possible CLD scenarios.
@JHaas wrote:
When you got your CLD did you just stick with one architecture you were comfortable with or did you base the architecture on the requirements? I'm thinking of just sticking with the producer/consumer approach as it seems to be broad enough to handle all all the possible CLD scenarios.
I'll chime in...
You are asking the wrong question! while "Actually passing the Exam" is important, you are mis-focused. The CLD exam permits you to demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of applying software engineering principals in a LabVIEW IDE. Become familliar with as many design patterns as you can!
Sure, every Programmer has their own "Favorite" bag of tricks- usually infuenced of the needs of the customers they serve or their mentors customer's needs. But can you truely state you have a journeyman's understanding of LabVIEW without some knowledge of the properties of several established software design patterns and how they are implemented in LabVIEW?
And trust me! you'll need that knowledge to pass the CLD-R which focuses more on the theoretical aspects that cannot be gauged easilly from the practical demonstration.
Re-reading that - my tone may sound harsher than I intend. So, rather than edit the above I will simply state that nothing harsh was intended
Just wanted you to realize that the CLD Polo shirt you will get from NI is not actually free! Skull Sweat! and much of it is the price.
No offense taken, I appreciate all comments
I take a lot of pride in my coding and understand it's very important to know what your doing and do the right thing. Sitting at my desk, without a clock ticking or a proctor sitting behind me I can do a pretty nice job on all of the sample exams. The problem for me is that in the exam scenario the clock is ticking and there is a proctor there, etc 
For me to succeed in the CLD I have to go in with a strategy. The strategy that works, for me anyway, is to make sure that I score all my Style and Documentation points and get as much fuctionality going as I can.
@JÞB wrote:
@JHaas wrote:
When you got your CLD did you just stick with one architecture you were comfortable with or did you base the architecture on the requirements? I'm thinking of just sticking with the producer/consumer approach as it seems to be broad enough to handle all all the possible CLD scenarios.
I'll chime in...
You are asking the wrong question! while "Actually passing the Exam" is important, you are mis-focused. The CLD exam permits you to demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of applying software engineering principals in a LabVIEW IDE. Become familliar with as many design patterns as you can!
Sure, every Programmer has their own "Favorite" bag of tricks- usually infuenced of the needs of the customers they serve or their mentors customer's needs. But can you truely state you have a journeyman's understanding of LabVIEW without some knowledge of the properties of several established software design patterns and how they are implemented in LabVIEW?
And trust me! you'll need that knowledge to pass the CLD-R which focuses more on the theoretical aspects that cannot be gauged easilly from the practical demonstration.
Re-reading that - my tone may sound harsher than I intend. So, rather than edit the above I will simply state that nothing harsh was intended
I will have to respectfully disagree with Jeff here. Evaluating whether you can select the right design pattern, etc is more part of the CLA exam and even there, 4 hours is not enough to demonstrate this. If NI would really want to evaluate mastery in choosing the right tool for the right job, they would look at actual projects we have worked on. That is not practical nor feasible. Instead they look at the next best thing: can you have a functional application in 4 hours that meets requirements, style guidelines and is well documented (CLD). Can you have a wireframe that any CLD could convert into a functional application that meets requirements and has enough instructructions (CLA). I am oversimplifying, but that is my understanding.
For the exam, I do recommend that you come in with an strategy and a design pattern you feel comfortable with. As I have mentioned in other posts, I would recommend you check the shipping Project Templates and choose one of those (Getting Started Window>>Create Project>>Templates there is a project template for a simple state machine and there is one for a QMH, which is a more advance form of Producer/Consumer). Become familiar with the design pattern or project template you choose and make sure you understand how to use it. All the shipping project examples come with documentation explaining their proper use. This will save you tons of time the day of the exam so you can focus on getting the functionality implemented. If you arrive with the idea of choosing what to use at the exam, you will loose valuable minutes and might not get the time to finish. Also, unless you are a very experienced LabVIEW developer, you run the risk of questioning the design pattern you chose during the exam and will be tempted to change patterns mid way.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Fab
For your everyday job and projects with LabVIEW, I recommend you spend time modelling your application with whatever tools you are comfortable with (via flow charts, UML diagrams, Excel spreadsheets lists of steps, etc). Do proof of concepts, prototypes and be ready to throw them away. Then when you have a good solid idea of what is the best approach for your application, go for that. This approach will/should take more than 4 hours and you won't even have started working on the application itself.
@JÞB wrote:
@JHaas wrote:
When you got your CLD did you just stick with one architecture you were comfortable with or did you base the architecture on the requirements? I'm thinking of just sticking with the producer/consumer approach as it seems to be broad enough to handle all all the possible CLD scenarios.
I'll chime in...
You are asking the wrong question! while "Actually passing the Exam" is important, you are mis-focused. The CLD exam permits you to demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of applying software engineering principals in a LabVIEW IDE. Become familliar with as many design patterns as you can!
Sure, every Programmer has their own "Favorite" bag of tricks- usually infuenced of the needs of the customers they serve or their mentors customer's needs. But can you truely state you have a journeyman's understanding of LabVIEW without some knowledge of the properties of several established software design patterns and how they are implemented in LabVIEW?
And trust me! you'll need that knowledge to pass the CLD-R which focuses more on the theoretical aspects that cannot be gauged easilly from the practical demonstration.
Re-reading that - my tone may sound harsher than I intend. So, rather than edit the above I will simply state that nothing harsh was intended
I will have to respectfully disagree with Jeff here. Evaluating whether you can select the right design pattern, etc is more part of the CLA exam and even there, 4 hours is not enough to demonstrate this. If NI would really want to evaluate mastery in choosing the right tool for the right job, they would look at actual projects we have worked on. That is not practical nor feasible. Instead they look at the next best thing: can you have a functional application in 4 hours that meets requirements, style guidelines and is well documented (CLD). Can you have a wireframe that any CLD could convert into a functional application that meets requirements and has enough instructructions (CLA). I am oversimplifying, but that is my understanding.
For the exam, I do recommend that you come in with an strategy and a design pattern you feel comfortable with. As I have mentioned in other posts, I would recommend you check the shipping Project Templates and choose one of those (Getting Started Window>>Create Project>>Templates there is a project template for a simple state machine and there is one for a QMH, which is a more advance form of Producer/Consumer). Become familiar with the design pattern or project template you choose and make sure you understand how to use it. All the shipping project examples come with documentation explaining their proper use. This will save you tons of time the day of the exam so you can focus on getting the functionality implemented. If you arrive with the idea of choosing what to use at the exam, you will loose valuable minutes and might not get the time to finish. Also, unless you are a very experienced LabVIEW developer, you run the risk of questioning the design pattern you chose during the exam and will be tempted to change patterns mid way.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Fab
For your everyday job and projects with LabVIEW, I recommend you spend time modelling your application with whatever tools you are comfortable with (via flow charts, UML diagrams, Excel spreadsheets lists of steps, etc). Do proof of concepts, prototypes and be ready to throw them away. Then when you have a good solid idea of what is the best approach for your application, go for that. This approach will/should take more than 4 hours and you won't even have started working on the application itself.
Just wanted to follow on my remark about CLA preparation. I can DEFINTELY recommend that level of preparation. I passed with 93.9%
