Sharing code as starting points

[BowenM]

I often find myself starting to write a subvi or function and think "someone HAS to have done this before".  Sure, I am capable of doing it and often times it is likely < 1/2 hour of effort.  But I will still do a quick forum / community search to see if it has either been done or if there is a VI out there I can already modify.

SO... what do you all think about making a thread or place just to request specific VIs or code as starting points?  Not because we can't do it and not because we want help figuring out, but simply out of shameless laziness.

The assumption here is that if I'm lazy you should be too! Well over half of the code I provide for people on the forums is just opening up some VI I've already created modifying it slightly and then posting it.  So, any answer should be basically "well, among the thousands of VIs I've written - yep. I've got that"

Thoughts?

[crossrulz]

I don't like the idea of requesting it.  Way too easy for people to abuse.  But as far as you sharing what you have done, that is what the Code and Documents section of the board is for.

[BowenM]

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@crossrulz wrote:

I don't like the idea of requesting it.  Way too easy for people to abuse.  But as far as you sharing what you have done, that is what the Code and Documents section of the board is for.

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I looked there first... "Example Programs" has been dead for 6 years!

I'm also curious why you feel requesting would be abused.  Obviously if it was part of the LabVIEW forums it would be.  But if it was a thread in BreakPoint I suspect it wouldn't be.

These days I feel like a large portion of my work is either

A)  Making a GUI work correctly which is nothing I would ever request code for anyway or

B) Putting parts / libraries that I've already written together in different configurations.

I'd say it is only once or twice a week (if that) that I actually add a new reusable function to my personal library

[JÞB]

Bowen

This actually sounds like a prime use for tags.  After you have tagged all those little gems of code I'l probably start borrowing your tag cloud to search for those vis myself.

[BowenM]

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@JÞB wrote:

Bowen

This actually sounds like a prime use for tags.  After you have tagged all those little gems of code I'l probably start borrowing your tag cloud to search for those vis myself.

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I have never bothered using tags.  Perhaps I should start by dumping some of my daily-use VIs in Code Exchange with some tags 🙂

This all came about the other day because I was given a 20 year old Parker servo controller and was told "make this work".  The only control DLL I could find for it just crashed in Windows 10.  There was some vague text in a product sheet about "ASCII over Ethernet" but 2 hours of searching yielded nothing else on the topic.  I found myself thinking "one simple VI on how to talk to this dumb thing could potentially save me HOURS of rummaging through boring hardware documentation"

... which is what led to this post.  I thought it would be nice to have a place to just request code examples or starting points.  Yes, I know the normal LabVIEW forums are for asking questions, but those are generally geared towards helping people learn LabVIEW, not geared toward just giving a shove in the right direction by posting a VI.

[Ben]

I gotta back up Jeff's suggestion about using tags.

It only takes a couple of seconds to type a few critical key words when I spot a good posting. The Tag clouds and pages are smart enought to ID related terms so ieven if I do not recall the exact tags I used for a post, I need only find a tag that is realted and then find my way back to that thread I saw 6 months ago.

Maybe this will help illustrate.

Start with this tag cloud and click on the word performance to view a mini-tag cloud with related terms and almost 90 threads that talk about different aspects of performance.

"Tag, you are it!"

Ben