How long did it take you to get to the point where you were confident in your Labview/programming ability?

[Ralph@NES]

I feel like every time I touch this system, I'm starting over again Bill-Murray-In-Groundhog-Day style.  Every time I think I'm starting to get a good grasp of something, I'll do a search for a solution and find an example that references so many alien concepts that it looks like greek to me!

How long did it take you to get to the point where you felt like you knew enough to get by?  Or to offer advice to others?  Being self taught and on a deadline is stressing me to no end. 

[andre.buurman@carya]

It took me at least 4 years to be as comfortable as I am now 7 years from the start.

I now have a set of principles that I can apply to almost any project that comes along.

Using:

State-machine
Event structure for GUI
Event structure for inter-process communication
Queues
Occurences
VI templates
VI Server
LV project interface
External libraries

Regards,

André

Message Edited by andre.buurman@carya on 08-31-2007 10:02 AM

[tbob]

I've been using LV for 7 years and I still feel I have a lot to learn.  I guess I started to feel confident after 3 to 4 years.  I moved from sequence structures to data flow in a year or two, then I learned state machines about the 3rd year.  I learned events when they first came out.  But there is always something new coming out, User events, timed loops, project window, shared variables.  Expertise becomes obsolete very fast in this world.

[Révolution]

I've discovered Labview this year at school were we learned a very little. Just enough to get started.

I applied for a training period at SOMFY were I was asked to develop a Labview application.

I have now spent 2 moths working on Labview 8 hours a day, and I would say that more than 80% of the time was getting self taught and 20% was developing the application we asked me to do. And I would say Yes, it is stressing to be self taught and on deadline.

I've already started offering advice to others that ask question here. Sometimes, there are basic question on fields I have already explored that I can answer. It’s always a pleasure for me to answer a question.

Each time I see a basic question, I rush to answer it (I leave the hard ones to veteran  )

After 2 moth, I am not confident at all, and I still ask basic questions very often.


Révolution

Message Edited by Révolution on 08-31-2007 10:57 PM

Message Edited by Révolution on 08-31-2007 10:58 PM

[Joe_H]

I've been doing this stuff for almost 4 yrs (Forum taught) and I still have to ask what others consider to be "basic questions".

Just start answering questions and learn from your mistakes. If you know the answer post it, if you need to ask a question then ask.

[GuenterMueller]

I totally agree to those who mention a period of about 3 years until I felt quite professional in using LabVIEW.

Regards, Guenter

[tst]

I guess it depends a lot.

First, your own condition and environment matter.
Do you have to learn software design principles at the same time as learning LV itself or are you just interested in getting better knowledge of how to use LV?
Do you have a design handed down to you which you have to implement?
Maybe your programs are relatively simple and you get by without designing up front.
Do you have a "starting from a blank page" problem?

Second, the available learning material probably decides a lot. There are all kinds of books and courses available which can probably help you (note - I haven't used any of them, so I can't really testify on that). New features are hard to learn without knowing what surrounds them first. A good book or course probably structures these appropriately. I found that learning new features can usually only be done by getting into them, using them and then finding out what you're doing wrong. Otherwise, it is sometimes hard to understand the proper use and use cases of these features. Personally, I've found that there is a lot of material available online (NI and the LAVA forums are the two big sources), but that you have to be able to find it, and that's not always easy.

As for the actual answer, I felt fairly confident about the basic usage of LV after a few days\weeks, because I was familiar with programming. I've seen others who weren't and had a harder time. As for the usage of other features, it often takes time to learn. It took me time to learn how to properly use the event structure (I only started using LV a couple of months earlier). I still don't understand the exact use cases of LV classes and probably won't until I actually sit down and write some code which uses them.

I can see how this can be problematic in work-related code and the solution might be to install a copy of LV at home and use that for some personal projects where you can test out new features. The LabVIEW license agreement allows you to do that, but that might create a problem with your personal life (e.g. you might not want to deal with LV after work hours).

I have found out that experience and being active online helped a lot and allowed me to know about new features before I actually have to use them myself. If you read about the problems others have with certain features, it sometimes helps you understand what those features do and what some of the potential downfalls are. In any case, I still tried to find good tutorials and examples for each new tool I learned.

[tst]

P.S. Being active online will probably help you a lot, because it forces you to think about the problem the poster of the question has. Don't be afraid to offer your solution.

• In the worst case, you will be wrong and no one will notice it.
• In the less worse case, you will be wrong and someone will correct you, so you learned something.
• In the even less worse case, there will be a better way than you suggested and you will learn something for next time.
• In the not-really-so-bad case, the poster will say "thank you, you saved my day" and reward you with an avalanche of stars, which seem to be badly craved.

The big advantages are that you learn stuff as you post and that you get a community of people who do the same thing you do.

[altenbach]

---

Ralph@NES wrote:
How long did it take you to get to the point where you were confident in your Labview/programming ability?

---

Like everything else in life, LabVIEW is an infinite fractal abyss.

• Once you know the big things and go into more details, new complexities arise, ... ad infinitum.
• As soon as you "know everything", NI comes out with a new version and you have to start over. 🙂
• Wash...rinse...repeat.

I am at a state where I can sit down and solve almost any task with not much original effort. Over the last 11 years, I have made every possible mistake at least once and learned from it :o. Looking at some of my early code, it is actually quite good by my current standards. Still there are dark areas in the palette that I never visit, where I don't feel so comfortable.

Even an advanced beginner can write dynamite LabVIEW code that is relatively bug-free and has a useable UI. A broken wire is easier to find and fix than a missing semicolon. 😄

[tbd]

Hi Ralph,

---

I feel like every time I touch this system, I'm starting over again Bill-Murray-In-Groundhog-Day style.  Every time I think I'm starting to get a good grasp of something, I'll do a search for a solution and find an example that references so many alien concepts that it looks like greek to me!

---

This is exactly how I feel about Linux!

Learning is work, but the higher you climb, the easier it gets - dig-in and ask questions!

If you sometimes feel humbled by the knowledge/ability of others here, I can guarantee you're not alone.

Cheers!

Message Edited by tbd on 09-01-2007 04:58 PM