LabView vs LabWindows/CVI

[Ali65]

I think it has to be explicit for some people who cannot understand the light hint:

The algorithm will not be better or worse, because it is typed or drawn.

I can only recognize one advantage of drawing: you can charge more, because it takes much more time to create and maintain that code.

Don't forget, not only you have to drop (or quick drop) your boxes, but you also draw the lines among the boxes.

Ben:

The algorithm will be the same, whatever font size you use.

[altenbach]

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Ali65 wrote:

I can only recognize one advantage of drawing: you can charge more, because it takes much more time to create and maintain that code. Don't forget, not only you have to drop (or quick drop) your boxes, but you also draw the lines among the boxes.

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Now that's a bold statement. Do you have any hard numbers to back it up?

(The general consensus is that the opposite is true. Increased productivity is one of the strong points of LabVIEW).

I understand that not everybody will find LabVIEW easy. That's why we have poets and artists. Van Gogh would have had a hard time writing War and Peace and Tolstoy would have never come up with Starry Night. 😄

[Ali65]

Not everybody finds LabView easy. I think there is a consensus about this one.

LabView increasing productivity? nay. Some may say that, but there are no hard numbers, but sales talk.

Tolstoy would have never come up with anything if he could not use a nice language, but hieroglyphs.

[RavensFan]

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@Ali65 wrote:

LabView increasing productivity? nay. Some may say that, but there are no hard numbers, but sales talk.

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It's not just sales talk when the people who were sold LabVIEW and use it day in and day out agree with it.

[Darin.K]

LabVIEW makes some simple things complex and some complex things simple.

In the beginning you complain about the former, but when you get used to it you enjoy the latter.

[Ben]

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@Ali65 wrote:

Not everybody finds LabView easy. I think there is a consensus about this one.

LabView increasing productivity? nay. Some may say that, but there are no hard numbers, but sales talk.

Tolstoy would have never come up with anything if he could not use a nice language, but hieroglyphs.

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No hard numbers because who is going to pay two development teams to devlop the same app in two different languages... but I have come close.

About 11 years ago, I delivered an app in 3 months. The customer (who had an in-house C-team) was suprised when we dilevered as promised saying "I did not believe when you said you could do it in 3 months. My in-house team would have taken a year or more."

The other story goes the other way around. We developed an app in a month. The customer decided we were too expensive so they decided to rewrite it themsleves in VB. A year and a half later, they had the VB version working.

hieroglyphs BTW are actually phonetic and not pictograms at all.

Ben

[Dennis_Knutson]

I was once paid to create the same apps in CVI and LabVIEW. They were instrument drivers that a customer wanted in both languages. I developed the LabVIEW ones first and then wrote the CVI drivers. If memory serves, I spent anywhere from 20-50% more on the CVI versions. I should also mention that I was a LabWindows programmer since version 1 (before 'CVI' and when it was only for DOS) and had a few more years experience with that before using LabVIEW.

[RayFarmer]

Isn't there a wizard that gives you most of the driver structure and common code and then isn't there another menus option converts your CVI driver to a labview driver.

[Ben]

Dennis' story reminds of yet another example of LV vs CVI.

We used to teach the CVI course and had a CVI developer decrtified to teach the course. He quiped after being asked to quote the project in both LV and C saying

 "I just estimate what it will take in LV and then double it for CVI." (Former DSA CVI instructor circa 2000, paraphrased of course).

Ben

[LV_Pro]

You decertified him? 🙂

They are apples and oranges, both fruit, but different. Having programmed for many years in text based languages before discovering LabVIEW I can say that I am able to produce more work in LabVIEW per unit time than I ever did in those others. As to maintainability, well I have seen some serious spaghetti code in every language, LabVIEW is just the first where it actually looks like spaghetti! Creating maintainable code is less a function of which language than of having a well thought out structure and all developers adhering to some coding standards.