what are the disadvantages of labview?

[aeastet]

A few thoughts here for me:

1. When upgrading over the years compatibility has been an issue. The runtime engine for 7.1 not compatible with 8.1  8.2 not compatible with 8.6 unless you uninstall and reinstall of them in the correct order.

2. It is very expensive when compared to other programming languages. Keep in mind here that you do get a lot of extra that the others do not give you.

3. If you do not stay up to date you have the possibility of becoming obsolete.

4. Each tool that you purchase may need a license and and additional cost for you to distribute even if you do not sell you software. I my company I had to get rid of the vision and have someone develop a C++ dll for vision because of the ridiculous cost and licensing for the vision module.

5. Tool kits are expensive. Report generation, Matlab, Vision etc...

6. Support for hard questions is not very good. I have never had a problem fixed from calling NI. I get more help and better answers here on the forums.

7. NI now charges for support if you are not part of the software subscription program. That cost a lot too.

8. Did I mention that everything cost a lot?

[WG-]

A disadvantage is in my opinion that there are no international standard like in C.

[Joe_H]

I work for Siemens (over 400,000 employees world wide, is that big enough) and use LabVIEW on a daily basis for anything from main stream medical applications to simple GUI's that check string lengths for people. I look at LabVIEW as a tool to my job. Sometimes LabVIEW is the best tool for the job, sometimes it is not. After all if one tool was good for everything then why do mechanics need wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers, allen wrenches etc...

LabVIEW may not always be the best tool to use all the time but for me it is the best tool to use %90 of the time and I love to use it. It's fun to use, I dont have to type as much, it is easier for me to follow and keep up with what the program is actually doing or supposed to do.

Some disadvantages:

Cost, initial start up is expensive.

User interface controls and the like could use an overhaul

NI has made it hard for developers to take more than a week to develope a program because of the "Ease of use" that they market on

this is just my 2 cents

[Broken_Arrow]

All you people making "coin" with LabVIEW -- what a hassle! You should insist on getting paid with paper bills. Heck even a check would be more convenient. In the mean time, you could use this,

[hecmar.arreola]

I'm a LabVIEW fanboy, so this is a tough question.  I work in test, measurement, and control for a small company and I'm a 1-man team when it comes to the electrical side of our test systems.  LabVIEW is a god send.  Sure, it costs a lot of money as any good tool would.  But in my rapid-changing environment I find that LabVIEW cuts my development time down quite a bit over traditional programming languages (and I've written in PHP, C++, and Visual Basic professionally).

The biggest disadvantage that I deal with is documenting my code is much more difficult than it was in other languages.  "Self documenting code" is an oxymoron IMHO.  When I have a project that requires a lot of documentation for my code, I find it tedious as it involves a lot of clicking around.  When it is all done the documentation looks nice, its just a hassle.

Since NI introduced LabVIEW OOP (and I learned how to use it), LabVIEW has been blowing my mind lately.  LabVIEW OOP is one of the better implementations of this style of coding that I have used.  Also, the ActiveX/.NET support is very nice.

[MarkGrindell]

Labview frightens me deeply; it's the most grotesque methodology that I have ever seen, and I go back 35 years starting with aerospace. You have an application where there are local variables scattered around the screen, even just finding the actual application is not straightforward. You cannot have a small, simple local variable unless it's on the application screen. You cannot have simple compound datatypes unless they have "graphical representations". Debugging is a nightmare. The code that I've seen generates income for the programmers who work with it because it is a fearful, unmaintainable liability that costs a fortune in time and effort, entices managers with promises of amazing productivity and draws them into a swamp. That's the least I would say about it.

[RavensFan]

Your first two posts you've created have such a negativity towards LabVIEW, I wonder why you are trying to use it at all.

If you don't understand it, and will never want to understand it with the negative attitude coming in, it would probably make you happier if you just stayed away from it it and stick with whatever text-based programming language you seem to be most comfortable with.

[altenbach]

Mark, virtually all your statements are incorrect and are based in a basic misunderstanding of graphical programming. A well written program does not have local variables except for rare ui handling. D Debugging is fantastic, it's like open diagram brain surgery where you can watch what's happening in real time.

[GerdW]

Hi Mark,

you shouldn't generalize your impressions of LabVIEW!

Because when YOU aren't able to create"nice" VIs doesn't mean WE aren't too...

[altenbach]

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@MarkGrindell wrote:

The code that I've seen generates income for the programmers who work with it because it is a fearful, unmaintainable liability that costs a fortune in time and effort, entices managers with promises of amazing productivity and draws them into a swamp.

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These same programmers would have created text based code that's equally unmaintainable, so don't blame the medium. (It just would have taken them much longer to write it. 🐵

I am sorry you inherited bad code. We are here to help.