Free, General Programming LabVIEW Edition

[powerofpi]

Idea:

Create a free, stripped down edition of LabVIEW for general purpose programming (GPP). Let's call this hypothetical edition "LabVIEW Lite". By GPP, I mean programming tasks that have nothing to do with data acquisition, test, or measurement- tasks such as creating generic PC, mobile, and web applications. Former text-based programmers would flock en mass to LabVIEW Lite for GPP use cases if a free, stripped down IDE were available. Imagine the recent popularity of the Eclipse IDE and Java, only with LabVIEW Lite and G!   

Rationale:

• LabVIEW Lite would exponentially promote the paradigm of graphical system design.
• Few (if any) structural dataflow languages are available for GPP.
• Structured dataflow languages are insanely cool! Inherent parallelism, increased productivity, and hierarchical system design are only a couple of reasons. These are things other GPP programming languages can't offer.
• 16, 32, 64, ... core consumer devices are coming! LabVIEW is poised to exploit parallelism in a way that is hopelessly messy with text-based languages.
• GPP use cases of LabVIEW Lite would spark user ideas for many non-GPP use cases, for which NI would receive full LabVIEW and NI hardware sales.

Implementation:

• No measurement/test/data acquisition VIs or tools.
• No FPGA tools.
• Application (exe, dll) builder for stripped down applications.
• The LabVIEW IDE we all know and love.
• Primitive types, clusters, structures, loops, file i/o, etc. provided.

I think it's a shame that programmers today aren't using G! What do you think?

[altenbach]

NI currently offers a free dataflow development system in the form of the Web UI builder. You only pay if you actually want to deploy standalone applications.

Granted, it is definitely clunkier than LabVIEW and is probably not really suited for advanced linear algebra, nonlinear fitting, and other cool stuff where regular LabVIEW shines even without any hardware involvement.

If I remember right, many, many years ago, the student edition did not allow third party DLLs, basically to force the use of NI hardware exclusively. Times have changed, and very low cost embedded systems are the future, many in the two digits price range (arduino, LX9 FPGA, Schmid-Engineering had a booth at NI week with some interesting embedded LabVIEW platforms, etc.). Kids and hobbyists (maybe even I :D) want those!

How about a no-cost, hardware-free LabVIEW with additions to develop for daq, embedded, and FPGA. Only deployed application would need mandatory activation (or distribution) through NI (similar to android market or appstore) where the developer sets the price (even free, epecially in early versions) and NI takes a cut. 

[powerofpi]

Web UI Builder looks like a fun toy, thanks for the link

[mikealder]

A free to use version of Labview (Lite) would open up the user base to a much wider audience, but being free it shouldn't be fully featured, I use a copy at home and don't need the DAQ/ instrument drivers etc the basic functionality is more than capable of some serious tasks without this. I have even helped out with the kids homework using Labview on more than one occasion, the daughter can use it and my son will be starting to use it at some point in the near future. Without the fully fledged copy paid for at work I wouldn't have access to this software at home, a free to use version would be loaded to the kid's PC's if it were to be released, this opens up the user base even further.

I think the ability to add DAQ functionality should only be granted along with the purchase of DAQ related hardware, any "Lite" version should have the ability to unlock the DAQ elements of the software rather than removed in toto. Lets face it not many "Home Hobby" users will be paying out for top quality DAQ hardware but some of the lower cost USB DAQ solutions would be a handy transition step, purchase of said hardware could unlock some of the basic DAQ functionality within the software, for example just the Express DAQ toolset rather than the lower level sub vi's.

Once an appreciation of the software and its capabilities are attained it could, as a result be introduced at a persons place of work aiding further sales of the full package, I had a heck of job getting funding for the first system I purchased at work as it was nothing more than a gamble based upon information gleaned from engineering publications, had I been able to demonstrate something directly work related things would have been considerably easier - Mike

[powerofpi]

NI has a once-in-an-organization's-lifetime opportunity right now; it dominates the dataflow language market! Other dataflow languages are nowhere near the quality of LabVIEW. Unfortunately, NI seems to have its eyes closed to LabVIEW's potential. 

Very soon, the programming community is going to realize that explicit parallelism with procedural languages is intractably messy. When this happens, a dataflow language will arise and dominate the programming landscape for the next several decades, much as C/C++ have dominated the past decades. Will this language be LabVIEW/G? I hope so, but right now it's sounding unlikely.

[Terry_ALE]

I did not search all the comments on this thread but for a few years Microsoft has offered Visual Studio Community Edition for FREE https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/.

I think NI should do the same.  Add FPGA too, why not show off some of the best parts of LabVIEW, just limit to the cheaper FPGA cards like sbRIO or myRIO.

A free edition (not 50 bucks) gets you into a broader community that is looking elsewhere (Python, etc.).

With NXG's files now being nearly all open (VIs are XML files), it is time to make a free edition of the development environment.

[parthabe]

Hi Darren,

I just saw that this has been in Beta for a little over a year now. May we get to know some information of what we will get to see?!

[crossrulz]

parthabe

LabVIEW Community Edition NI blog announcement

LabVIEW forum discussion

[wiebe@CARYA]

It's coming soon... Look for LabVIEW-Community-Edition.

It won't be stripped down, at least not it's functionality. The license is restricted to personal and non-commercial usage (but do read it yourself).

[Darren]

Available with the LabVIEW 2020 Community Edition. The Community Edition is free for non-commercial use, and provides the same functionality as the LabVIEW Professional Edition.