NI is not a C/C++ Editor-Debugger company. And, it will never be able to invest the man power needed to get there. NIs strengths are its Instrument UIs, its libraries, and it's visual application UI pieces. The LabWindows/CVI tool looks and feels like tools from the mid 90's (ie. like an old Borland C editor, but even less featured). It lacks the toolset found in VisualStudios, NetBeans, and Eclipse. And, it will always be behind.
The Verigy93k tester was like this several years ago. They wrote their own C/C++ editor, and it was at a mid 80's level. When a team was asked to rewrite the UI and bring it up to date, they made a novel choice (they recognized that they were not a UI platform / editor company), and they moved their product under Eclipse. Teradyne Flex did something similar a year or two later moving under Excel and Visual Studio. The thing is this, both companies realized that they could make more money focusing on their real strength. They added libraries and apis to work in the platforms framework, and changed/adapted the platform framework to work for them. ie. Teradynes Flex test tool does not say "Excel/Visual Studio", it says it is a Teradyne product based on MS Excel and VS. And, they have adapted the platform to their needs adding on the extra Windows/UIs/... to meet their needs. Same with the Verigy 93K.
In Teradynes case, they went back to the drawing board. So, we will ignore this (even with their success). In Verigys case, all their existing APIs worked in the new platform, and the user didn't need to change anything when they upgraded. But, suddenly the Editor and Debugger were up to date, with latest greatest features. It was a huge change overnight.
LabWindows really should make a shift to Eclipse. Keep your old legacy stuff at first, but working under Eclipse. Add in "Views" and "Tools" to supplement what Eclipse doesn't give you for free. And, remove unwanted or confusing plugins from the eclipse base. (This is what advantest did.) Leave in features that make Eclipse great, like error view, and the ability to have several "perspectives". And really focus the man power into making a product that will blow the others out of the water. NI has what it takes to make great Instrument editing/debugging windows in Eclipse. But, NI doesn't have the 1,000's of people and millions of man hours required to make an Editor/Debugger that will compare to the Eclipses/VisualStudios of the world. As a business they should focus on what will make them a differentiator, and reuse what is accepted and common.
Anyway. My 2 cents on how you could really improve LabWindows in a few short months. (Note: Verigy spent all of 9 months and 9 engineers on their C/C++ integration into eclipse... I know... I was there at the time.) If you took the LabWindows team, and a year or two... Imagine how much better of a job you could do.
