How did you learn LabVIEW?

[JÞB]

I've told the story before.  I was thrown to the wolves and amung the group 3 of us who used LabVIEW I bet we made every mistake you have ever dreamed of in G.  Kinda like learning how to use a hammer to hit the nail and not your thumb.  Pain is an effective teacher.  Then I started posting on the forums and started getting fairly good at this here thingy. 

[DFGray]

I left Hewlett-Packard Labs and got a brand new job designing laser systems for a DTM Corporation (now part of 3D Systems).  A week after I got there, I needed to do some data acquisition.  They did not have HP workstations or Rocky Mountain BASIC.  All they had was LabVIEW, a Mac II, and an NB-A2000 with DMA board.  A week later, running through the self-paced tutorial book shipped with LabVIEW 3.0, I knew enough LabVIEW to get my job done.  In the 19 years since then, I have never stopped learning LabVIEW and have used it for a surprising number of things, from soft front panels and code generation, to marimba tuners and model railroad DCC controllers.  The fun never ends...

[crossrulz]

I was mostly a C/C++ programmer in school.  Then I got a co-op (internship, same thing) at a company that was fairly new to it.  They handed me a Basics I manual and away I went.  I was supposed to learn from LabVIEW from another co-op.  It did not take long to surpass him.  We used his code as an example of what NOT to do.  So, since I was being taught by C programmers, I was mostly learning on my own.  I picked up a lot of tricks from LAVA.  I'd say I learned most of my tricks from LAVA and then just playing around with the ideas.  From there, I was the first become certified.  After school, the company hired me on full time.  I quickly became the LabVIEW expert.  In the years since, I managed to get a Masters in EE and a CLA.  And now I'm at an Alliance Partner.  Still looking for ways to grow.

[JackDunaway]

In 2006 while still in engineering school, a student researcher from the materials joining lab told me they needed to hire an electrical engineer to instrument and control a hybrid drawn-arc stud welding process. Even though I never pictured myself as working in a welding lab, I took the job because it paid a WHOPPING $12/hr (I'm not joking - that was a lot of money).

At first, I hated the LabVIEW program I inherited, but gradually became intrigued by and eventually loved LabVIEW. I learned through trial-and-error-and-more-error, and also reading the forums. Deciding to work in the welding lab was arguably the single most important decision I made in college for three reasons: I got heavy exposure to systems engineering, my trajectory was set to pursue LabVIEW development as a profession, and I was able to save up enough money to buy an engagement ring.

[DianeS]

Love hearing all of your stories!!!

I designed and built a laser / OPO (optical parametric oscillator, for those of you playing along at home!) system and another guy wrote a LabVIEW controller for it.  He left the company.  A few design changes later, I found myself having to go in and rewrite a significant portion of the code.  This was in LV 4.0.

After a lot of swearing and a thrown hammer or two, I decided, "this is fun!".

A couple of years later, I convinced my company to send me to Basics II.  (No idea what it is called now.)  I didn't learn anything.  So I convinced them to send me to Intermediate I and II.  Holy SMOKES, I learned a lot!!!!

And I thought, "this is fun!!!!!!!!!"

I became the LabVIEW programmer for the company.  Then we ran into a problem.  The "Powers That Be" really, REALLY wanted me to design and build lasers.  Solid-state lasers.  Fiber lasers.  OPOs.  Etc.  I was an intuitive, experienced, very good laser engineer!  Give me a misbehaving (or nonexistent) laser, I'd tweak it into submission!  LabVIEW programmers were a dime a dozen!

But I really, REALLY wanted to write LabVIEW code.  (And QUALIFIED LabVIEW programmers aren't exactly a dime a dozen.  Now, are they?)

I was still awfully fond of lasers, though.

We worked it out until they hired a contractor for a LabVIEW job that I was not only capable of doing, I had actively lobbied to do.

I achieved my CLD and left to go independent as a LabVIEW programmer.

If Chris hadn't left and I hadn't had to hammer my way through his code and understand it well enough to change it (I had no idea the forums existed -- this was in 1997), much less ship it to customers as part of a system, I might still be building lasers!

Lasers are still awesome.  But LabVIEW's even better. 

[yenknip]

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DianeS wrote: 

Lasers are still awesome.  But LabVIEW's even better. 

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Bold statement...

Spoiler

[Rodéric]

I discovered LabVIEW during my first internship, I wrote a software using other languages, then someone came up with LabVIEW and he basicly said: "Wa have LabVIEW, never used it, it would be nice if you write your software with LabVIEW" So I got into it I learned it the hard way...

I then started learning LabVIEW from books (LabVIEW for everyone) and NI site and forums. I took my CLAD during my MS Degree. Then I got an internship in a NI alliance partner where I was involved in developping a generic architecture using LabVIEW and TestStand with a CLD mentor.

I've now been working for another Alliance partner for 10 mounths and will be taking the CLD and CTD soon. My coworkers (one former CLA) are teaching me...

PS: I did not take any NI classes but I'm teaching some of them.

[jcarmody]

I took a job in an Alliance Partner company that I had worked with on two projects at my previous position.  I had a bunch of programming experience, but not in LabVIEW.  They gave me a computer, a stack of CDs, a project with a deadline and answers to whatever questions I had.  They also had a requirement that employees become CLD & CPI in their first year, so they assisted me in getting those certifications.  Studying for these tests, and to teach Basics I & II helped a lot.

I discovered the forums quickly and found that I could get an answer to just about anything by googling "site:ni.com <my question>" or "site:lavag.org <my question>".  I further found, much to my surprise/delight, that lurking in the forums and reading interesting topics helped prepare me for my first CLD-R.  There were questions on topics that I'd never used, but had read about.

Learning LabVIEW after knowing other languages was easy.  All of the constructs that I had learned in VB, C and Fortran started to make sense as LabVIEW showed me what the concepts meant.  The graphical aspect of LabVIEW development made all the difference.

[danil33]

As I have completed my B.Tech degree in Electronics And Instrumentation and I joined my company.Here they alloted me to learn labview (which I have'nt heard before) and do projects in labview.After installing LV2009 in my machine I started with "Getting started with LabVIEW".Gained some basic ideas and did some simple programs.The time went on our Head gave me more big programs, and the time when Iam stuck I depend on the LabVIEW forum.And I strongly believe LabVIEW forum is the best place to learn things more clearly because there is a saying "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 23 Psalm.We can learn a lot of thing from the LV experts.So according to me my learning process is not complete.when we get new problems(some times we create problems).We will search for solution in the forum,we learn.....we learn....we learn........So every day we can learn new things.process never ends!

[Ben]

Add me to the list of those that enjoyed reading all of the stories.

I have problby told it previously so I'll keep it short.

While working in the Condensed Physics Labs adn the Univ of Pittsburgh, I was asked by one of the professors "Ben, do you know LabVIEW?" I replied "G I don't know. I could probablr figure it out." never realizing ath the time what a nice pun that was.

Soon afterwards I was asked to build a fixture to automate alligining single mode fibers that I wanted to develop in C but I was over-ruled and forced to do it LV. learned to like it so I added it to my resume.

The company I work for now liked it when I told them "Getting paid to write in LV would be a dream job."

They forced me to go thru Basic 1 & 2 and adanced where I learned about all of the mistakes I had made.

Info-LabVIEW and Rolf Kalbermatter guided my advanced studies. When the forum were created Greg McKaskle's post were required reading for me.

I learned a lot from the forums trying to write code that out-perfomed Christian's examples (I actually did that one time!... but it was a corner case).

It is now the intersting question posted by everyone else that no drives my learning.

Take care,

Ben