Where to begin learning debug and code analysis

[RobProudfoot]

Hi All,

My work has an enterprise agreement with NI and technical support is available to us, running latest labVIEW 2023. I have completed core 1+2 training this year and I have some limited experience maintaining our current NI systems and have built some small projects for use at work making simple measurements. 

What I want:
To learn the debugging and analysis tools to allow me to better evaluate our current systems. 

Where should I start? Does anyone have any training course suggestions (as we have work credits for training use), or any documentation or general pointers on where to begin?

I have already begun hunting around the forums and training courses available and this is what i've found:

• https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Development-Best/Software-Engineering-Technical-Manual-and-Exercise...
  Latest revision/update is like 2013, and I can see in 2018 people having issues with some of the tests/examples. Is this still a relevant document?
• https://education.ni.com/center-of-excellence/resources/146/design-and-code-reviews 
• https://learn.ni.com/courses/advanced-debugging-tools-and-techniques
  This one looks quite good actually. Will use up credits but definitely seems in the right direction.

Additional Info incase its relevant/helpful:
We have a remotely deployed FPGA running a system, that system was originally coded like over a decade ago, it has since been updated by another developer who is now also no longer with the team, so its old code given a quick spruce up. It works, but it has problems and isn't exactly visible or designed with ease of debugging in mind. It was a getting it running situation. 

At present I am able to maintain it and make minor bug fixes and generally keep it running but I would like to be able to better understand its problems, learn the tools needed to identify how 'effective' it really is and hopefully with time make quality improvements and updates. 

Any help or points at where to begin learning would be very welcome!
I am going to start here for now as this does seem very useful: https://learn.ni.com/courses/advanced-debugging-tools-and-techniques

Rob

[wiebe@CARYA]

It wouldn't hurt to search for testing courses too (it seems you're trying to absorb as much as you can 👍).

Not all code is easy to test (automatically) but if (when) it's well designed, you should be able to add (unit) tests. Then you can make changes (improvements, bug fixes) and know for sure that what your testing still works.

It helps to understand (unit) testing, because testable code needs to be well designed, and well designed code is easier to test. So, knowing a thing or two about testing will help with design choices.

Others will hopefully post some links, I'm not organized enough to have them at hand.

[Bob_Schor]

The recent book "LabVIEW Graphical Programming, Fifth Edition" by Richard Jennings and Fabiola de la Cueva has chapters on techniques such as Unit Testing and debugging (as I recall).  It is recent enough and thorough enough that I think it might be appropriate to take you to the next level in LabVIEW education.

Bob Schor

[Terry_ALE]

Which FPGA product does your system have?