LabVIEW
Stack Exchange
Hi Sean,
I can see the merits of increasing LabVIEW's presence in the Stack Exchange community.
@SeanJ wrote:
Hi JKSH,
Stack overflow has been fragmenting for a while now.
For example there is a MATLAB proposal in progress. Most popular cryptocurrencies have their own stack, etc.
To me, we're either progressive or we're not.
The response I have got here is very worrying. I chose LabVIEW over a competitor all those years ago in large part because of the competitors attitude. Many of the responses in this thread reflect an attitude not dissimilar to that historic competitors attitude.
I agree with you to a degree, it would be nice to build a presence on SO, however, after all these years it doesn't seem to have worked. There are a lot of advantages to having a dedicated SE, it costs nothing and is free publicity for NI. On balance, I think it would be the right move but of course that's just my opinion.
Not surprising, given the proprietary nature of the languages you've mentioned.
To the point, though, I think it would do more for the LabVIEW community if NI stopped marketing it as a "tool so easy that an engineer can use it" and started marketing it as a legit language that needs "serious developers for serious applications" than getting face time on Stack Exchange. How is the world of developers supposed to take LabVIEW seriously when the parent company does not?
Hope you're not too worried about my answers. I am a bit sceptical.
1)
You want LV to be more popular. For me, it should be just popular enough.
2)
As a measurement for this you mention IEEE. They spelled LabVIEW wrong. Shows how much they know. 90% of the popular languages above LV are free, open and platform independent. Seems that LabVIEW does a pretty good job competing with them. Note that a dropping popularity can also mean the others have gained popularity. It's all relative. These are not absolute measurements. If Arduino is a hype, LabVIEW might drop a bit...
3)
Stack Overflow is just one site they use to measure this popularity.
4)
Bosses check the points on SE? So let them check NI profiles. Seem a better solution then switching to SE. Btw. I'm pretty sure a CLD\CLA level developer can get a job here without searching.
5)
Even if I\we would want this, it's not in our hands. People asking questions should make this decision. Guess you could stop cold turkey with answering here, and people would seek alternatives like SE. That just doesn't seem right.
The questions on SE are answered AFAIK. I even got some NI forum mails when a SE question is not answer...
Even if I was convinced (actually did not decide, since it just does not seem in my control) what would you want us to do? (Working on the signature).
Search LabVIEW like a graph! Hi Wiebe,
Even if I was convinced (actually did not decide, since it just does not seem in my control) what would you want us to do? (Working on the signature).
At the moment all that needs to be done is follow the proposal, ask sample questions and upvote the sample questions you like.
The proposal is here:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/114168/labview-and-ni-applications
Maybe the IEEE survey is flawed but that is what people see. Personally, I think a LabVIEW presence on SE would help LabVIEW get taken more seriously. People who use LabVIEW know its benefits but I often encounter people who dismiss it too easily without taking to the time to learn how brilliant it is.
Maybe a stack could help, maybe not but I don't think it would make things worse.
I think I've said enough to highlight the potential and hopefully the discussion helped. I'm not advocating people put LabVIEW programmer in their signatures!
Seán
LabVIEW programmer
