To Labview or not to labview

[Faraclas]

Greg,

I went through this same decision for my company. All in all there are a few important things to pass on to you.

1) For me, time to market is much faster using LabVIEW than C or C++. There are probably many C++ programers who would disagree, but this is my opinion.

2) We rely heavily on Ni DAQ, which is by far easiest to impliment in LabVIEW

3) I have found that a LabVIEW program can look virtually identical to a typical windows program using

[Faraclas]

Greg,

I went through this same decision for my company. All in all there are a few important things to pass on to you.

1) For me, time to market is much faster using LabVIEW than C or C++. There are probably many C++ programers who would disagree, but this is my opinion.

2) We rely heavily on Ni DAQ, which is by far easiest to impliment in LabVIEW

3) I have found that a LabVIEW program can look virtually identical to a typical windows program using
a) direct call to the WinAPI using the call dll function
b) Microsoft Active-X controls which can be used for almost anything
For example, you can embed an Excel graph into LabVIEW if you don't like the one's available
Personally, I think that LabVIEW's graphs are the one feature that gives it a clear advantage
c) Third party Active-X controls for features that MS only offers in the WinAPI
You have to pay for these, but the cost of the controls is far cheaper than developing them yourself in any language

[Faraclas]

Greg,

I went through this same decision for my company. All in all there are a few important things to pass on to you.

1) For me, time to market is much faster using LabVIEW than C or C++. There are probably many C++ programers who would disagree, but this is my opinion.

2) We rely heavily on Ni DAQ, which is by far easiest to impliment in LabVIEW

3) I have found that a LabVIEW program can look virtually identical to a typical windows program using
a) direct call to the WinAPI using the call dll function
b) Microsoft Active-X controls which can be used for almost anything
For example, you can embed an Excel graph into LabVIEW if you don't like the one's available
Personally, I think that LabVIEW's graphs are the one feature that gives it a clear advantage
c) Third party Active-X controls for features that MS only offers in the WinAPI
You have to pay for these, but the cost of the controls is far cheaper than developing them yourself in any language.

The one problem that I have with LabVIEW is that multi-platform development costs extra. I do not think that I should have to pay 3 times to build my applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux.