topic Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators in BreakPoint

Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

parthabe — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:24:19 GMT

Hi All,

I thought this would prop-up some interesting discussion in this board.

Who among us are native LabVIEW developers [ I mean to say LabVIEW is the first Programming Language they ve started to work upon in their career ] & who among us are migrators to LV [ from C, C++, etc., ].

I m a Native LabVIEW programmer wiring from LV 6i -->> LV 7.0 -->> LV 7.1 till now.

Maybe you experts can come out more elaborate on the cutting-down of the Project development time when you switched to LV from any text-based PL forn the same kind of projects, or the ease & flexibility of H/W programming with LV, and things like that...

It ll be of more help for people searching NI for those kinda things in future.

Re : Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

TiTou — Tue, 08 May 2007 06:25:18 GMT

Hi Partha,

I am also a native LV developper.
After a couple of years using LabVIEW (from 5.1 to 8.20) I do love it and wouldn't like to have to use text based language, but I must admit that sometimes I feel that not knowing other programming language is drawback.

Well... Now that I start thinking about it, the real point might not be that I am mono-"programming"-language but more that I haven't been trained as a software engineer, but as a thermal engineer. This explains why I do not know any text based language. 😉

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

shoneill — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:14:57 GMT

I've always had an interest in programming.

I remember programming on an Amstrad CPC 464 (Schneider for the mainland Europeans out there). Wasn't very good at it though.

Then I remember doing Pascal and C in college, both on a VAX network. We covered some basic stuff, like structures and functions, but never got to the "interesting" stuff. Since I was studying as an Analytical Scientist, It wasn't a formal programming training anyhow.

Then came LabVIEW. I grasped it fairly quick (perhaps doe to my limited exposure to text-based languages). A natural progression was Office VBA, which actually helped a lot to understand using ActiveX under LV. Tried Java a few times, but found it ultimately unwieldy.

I prefer to program in LabVIEW, but some things are still done quicker in other languages. Oh, I've also done a bit of good ol' "DOS" Batch ~~programming~~ scripting (under WInXP!). It's actually surprising how much can be achieved on this level......

So short version : more or less LabVIEW native.....

Shane.

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

AnalogKid2DigitalMan — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:14:49 GMT

Migrator:

BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, Assembly, PLC Ladder Logic, C, C++, VBA, LabWindows CVI

LabVIEW (and nothing else these days)

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

tbob — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:18:47 GMT

Started with Fortran77 (WOW, I'm an old guy), then proceeded with Basic, Pascal, 808x assembly, Z80 assembly, UNIX shell, C, C++, Ladder Logic, HPVEE, Labview 5.1.1, Visual Basic, Visual C, embedded VB, embedded VC, TestStand, LabWindows, Labview 6,7,8..... and now I do strictly Labview. I wouldn't go back to the others for anything. Sure was hard going from Labview to VB, but my job required it.

Re : Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

TiTou — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:25:04 GMT

I heard a lot of joke from NI people about HPVEE... Was it that bad ?
How was the switch from HPVEE to LabVIEW 5.1.1 ??

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

altenbach — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:28:19 GMT

It all started with FORTRAN_IV in the early seventies. Of course we programmed on punchcards and every week or so we traveled to the next city government building where they had a room filled with one gigantic computer, having 32kB or memory if I remember right. Online debugging was impossible. Ah, the good old times. 🙂

In the late seventies, I wrote some very useful programs on my TI-58 .

Later, I programmed a lot of Fortran on a PDP-11 and similar beasts. Anyone remember the line editors and tektronix vector displays? Learned some Pascal and Forth. Later used the VAX-11/780 unde VMS, even programmed some elaborate VT-100 UI using DIGITAL_Command_Language to make the Fortran code easier to use. For more advanced data analysis, I programmed in SAS . All on plain serial terminals with limited graphics capabilities.

My LabVIEW experience started with 4.0 on a 100MHz Pentium with 32MB of RAM. Suddenly, I was able to do anything I ever wanted! Programs started working on the first try and each program basically got a graphical UI for free once the diagram was in place. Never looked back! 🙂

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Darren — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:56:53 GMT

I started programming in LabVIEW (v5.0.1 in January 1999), and I've never used any other programming language. Why mess with perfection?

-D

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

tbob — Tue, 08 May 2007 17:24:15 GMT

TiTou:

When I started with HPVEE (before Labview), I thought it was great. It was graphical, but the graphics were nothing but boxes with titles. Very boorish looking. However, it was still graphical, not text. One thing it had from the beginning is the auto selection tool. So I got used to this right from the start. Then I moved to Labview 5.1.1 because of a change of jobs. Labview looked far superior, was easier to follow, but it didn't have the auto selection tool yet. I had to have one hand on the Tab key and the other on the mouse. I hated that. I wanted to stick with VEE. Then I started noticing the many things that I could do with Labview much easier than with VEE. The graphics were easier to follow. Another major difference was that VEE had an execution in/out node in all of its boxed functions. This meant you didn't have to rely on data flow programming. You could wire an execution wire to force the execution order. This was convenient, I wanted to stick with VEE again. Slowly I warmed up to Labview because of the graphics and the many more built in functions. I learned how to use the Error In and Error Out to replace VEE's Execution In and Execution Out. I was then sold on Labview. Errors were not that easy to handle in VEE. Also, VEE's loops are a joke. There is no loop structure like in Labview. You have to wire the loop. If I recall correctly, there was some type of loop start function and a loop continue funtion. The loop was not clearly visible as in the loop frame in Labview. You had to follow the wiring from start to end of loop.

Altogether, I don't consider VEE a joke, it is pretty good actually. But Labview is light years above VEE.

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Joe_H — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:24:31 GMT

LV native and I have loved every minute of it. However I am now being forced to learn C++ and VHDL. I do not mind VHDL but I really hate C++.

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Conseils — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:59:16 GMT

And in the begining the Lord said "Let there be binary" and so there was binary and he saw it was good.....

Well that's how I started; literally with 0s and 1's into a core store via a punch tape. Some assembler followed mixed with wired logic accumulators, alu's, adders and stuff which later became known as computers.

HEX programmed into bizarre systems built out of little 14 and 16 pin devices, memory spaced measured in bytes and clock speeds measured in the Kilo Hertz. Then followed BASIC (Hewlett Packard 9815,s Z80's, 6502's and some really obscure stuff) and FORTRAN in that order; odd but true. BBC Basic and Apple Basic, PSION OPL and more really obtuse stuff.

Fortunately at university it was PASCAL, a real compiler with monochrome text in the choice of your monitor phosphor, a parser with multiple passes, optimisation and technical stuff like that. Structure, black box approach, syntax diagrams, BNF. Then well it went down hill for a while with C, C++ and later finally at rock bottom Visual Basic and SQL. They really were dark days, marked with what one couldn't do rather than what could be done. Virtual programmable interrupt controllers, device driver hell, dll's and some stuff that it would be illegal and unkind to mention to youngsters . Had it not been for the structure imposed at university I would have given it all up and taken up accountancy or booze or both.

On one of the darker days of C malloc and so on, a shaft of light came forth from the apostle director... he said "Worry not, there is another path my son and it is called LabVIEW....."

Well actually he said "I have been to the competition as they are buying the company and they are using LabVIEW and if you want to continue working, get with the programme; like now!!... training course {cold days in hell were mentioned}... ha, you must be joking right? .... there's a manual isn't there?" . The quotes are true, actually he was an extremely good boss; thank god; I worked for him for a further 12 years or so (LabVIEW of course... 'don't say when but how high, SIR')!

LabVIEW versions since then..... X.XX ohh and HTML, Javascript, ASP even more SQL Ahh almost forgot, strangely enough; a foreign language as well.

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Dennis_Knutson — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:11:26 GMT

I learned Fortran in my last year of college. In 1975 or so, when I started working as a test engineer, I used a language called ATLAS. Coding sheets were turned over to keypunch operators that created a big stack of cards. The cards were then loaded into an IBM 370 mainframe that compiled it and created a mag tape that was loaded onto a TI micro-computer. It usually took days to find all of the mistakes in the punch cards before we could even start to debug the program. Around 1980 or so, the Commodore PET came out. This was a personal computer that came with a GPIB port. Wrote a lot of Basic programs for that and also did some C programming on a PDP-11. I bought version 1 of NI's LabWindows. Contrary to it's name, at this time, it was DOS only. When microsoft introduced Visual Basic, I started using that and thought this was really something else. Nice and easy user interface design. Not too long after that, the local NI Sales Engineer said, that since LabVIEW had been ported over to Windows, why not give that a try. Didn't really use it until version 3 was released but what a revelation. It was then, and remains the best way to program.

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

RobCole — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:10:05 GMT

Wow, suddenly I don't feel so old in here. 🙂

NOT a native LabVIEW programmer. I can go back to flipping toggle switches and hit the load button on a couple of systems. Punch cards were a step up. FortG, Fortran IV, Watbol, Assembly, BASIC, APL. I taught Pascal at a college for a short bit. I still have a copy of Apple Pascal at home (but no machine to run it on). I co-wrote what we called a "worm" program long before we'd heard the term Virus. All it did was speed up Apple DOS.

I've done some work in VB, but nothing that was completed. Took a course in C++.

I now do a lot of LabVIEW (since '92), but I'm learning C#. I'm always looking for something new to learn.

Rob

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

smercurio_fc — Fri, 11 May 2007 21:24:52 GMT

Cool, another thread with free 5-stars!

I am not a native LabVIEW programmer, but close. Initial program was Pascal on Mac computers (back when their ROMs were coded in Pascal), and a little bit of assembly language and Fortran due to college courses. Then LabVIEW, starting with version 2.something. Since then it's been probably about 70% LabVIEW. The rest has been VB, SQL, ASP, C, C++, VB.NET, and C#.

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Ben — Sat, 12 May 2007 17:43:18 GMT

I am a migrant as well starting out with toggle ins ( remeber the "I can write that code in 13 instructions." "I can .. 10 instructions" ... competion?) on Computer Automation naked mini's and used Debug via an ASR-33 Teletype (30 baud).

Switched jobs and sitll did adhoc toggle ins for PDP-11's ( 0102738 octal = move the data that follows this instruction to the address loacted in the next long word) but added DCL since the specailized analysis I needed wasn't available. The batch jobs had to run over night with the results being printed on green-bar paper the next morning. Taught myself VAX-macro to speed my applications and then added C to my arsenal so I could I could function as productively under Unix as VMS. (Anyone rember the NUXI story?).

I was latter directed by one of the PHD's I worked for at Pitt to use LabVIEW to implement one of his projects and was an istant convert. Since then I have only done enough C to get drivers working. So I can say "I used to C, but I got better."

Ben

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Matthew_Williams — Sat, 12 May 2007 19:54:14 GMT

Basic -> assembly (8080, z80, 6502, 6509, 80x86) -> Forth -> C -> LabVIEW. Any other Forthers here see
LV as a truly graphical Forth? To quote Steve Ciarcia, however, my favorite programming language is
still solder. Can't do as much as quickly with solder, but once it is done (properly) it stays done no matter what
Microsoft does 😉

Matt

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

devchander — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:34:44 GMT

A Migrator

Started with C >> Took a break for some time and was toying around with BioMedical Hardware( absolutely no S/W programming) during that period >> Then onwards, been faithful to LabVIEW for the past five years

ciao,

Dev

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Robst — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:55:55 GMT

Well, I have to confess that I'm not a native LV Programmer.

I have CS formation so I've tried a variety of languages. As I programmer I was born in college using C, with the typical "Hello Word" program, then I learned C++, Visual Basic, Visual C++ and then I programmed in Java for a long time. In my college people loves Java. Then sometime a professor showed me that LabVIEW existed, and I decided to give it a try. The idea of drawing a program instead of writing it sounded very nice. So I started to dig into the LV World and I realized this was exactly was I was looking for, I really loved it, and decided that I would work with LV all my days left...at least I hope so.

Ok, I seldom program some text code in Java or C, for helping my brother in this homework or doing small applications but rest of time I'm a LV guy.

About my experience with LV, well, almost a year in college and almost two at work, not to much really, so, as you can see I'm just a little child compared with some of you, but I'm on my way

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

Odd_Modem — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:56:19 GMT

Yes, APL was very cool! I started with a course in Fortran on a DEC LA02 line printer and then chased after courses that used video terminals. We had special APL terminals hooked up to a CDC mainframe. The keyboards had all the Greek characters, etc. on the keycaps and the terminal displayed everything with the special APL character set. If you Google "APL Domino" you'll see some findings that have key escape sequences. This is an artifact of the port of APL to DOS. The terminals for my course actually had a Domino key! I really enjoyed that class. Thirty years later I do everything in LabVIEW and I still feel fresh after eight hours of work. I haven't thought about APL for awhile, but I would imagine that G math could do everything that APL could.

Re: Native LabVIEWers & Migrators

johnsold — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:24:55 GMT

In college we used Algol on a modified UNIVAC mainframe. Punch cards. Come back the next day to find that you omitted the FIN card.

Then assembler for the PDP-8, 8080, Z80, 80186, and 6502. Switched to Pascal on Zylog single board computers and the Apple ][. When LV 1.2 came out we determined that it could do everything we had attempted in the past several years and everything we could anticipate as far into the future as our crystal ball could see. We switched to LV and have not written more than ten lines of text code since.

Lynn