Darren's Weekly Nugget 09/13/2010

[jmorris]

Great idea!  I just gave Kudos #160.  

-Joe

[Ben]

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@Aristos Queue wrote:

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@crossrulz wrote:

Is there a reason this couldn't be in the next service pack instead of waiting until 2011 comes out? (and yes, I kudo that idea a almost as soon as it was posted)

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We generally avoid putting anything into a service pack that is not very specifically a bug fix. The SP1 releases are pedantic about being bug fixes, not bug creators. They do not have the same long beta period that full releases have, so they avoid any new features as those might be the source of bugs.

And let me reiterate: Getting lots of kudos here does not guarantee this will make it into 2011. This is a "necessary but not sufficient" condition. But getting the kudos at least lets Darren and I try. 🙂

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Count now show 165.

"Tag you are it!"

Ben

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Thanks for the kudos, everyone. Darren and I will take it from here and see how far we get... keep an eye open for the beta program come spring to see if we made the case. 🙂

[JÞB]

Two comments.

This seems like one of those things that we have "lived with" like VI documentation, Icon editor, and multiple wire distribute evenly.  As a general rule LabVIEW has a great clean feel to it but, where it does fall down, it falls hard.  A bit of attention to these problem areas is overdue (IMHO)

Just because its "been that way" since inception is no excuse to call it a feature and not a bug.  The behavior is not what is desired- its a bug in my book.

Count = 177

[Ben]

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@Jeff Bohrer wrote:

Two comments.

This seems like one of those things that we have "lived with" like VI documentation, Icon editor, and multiple wire distribute evenly.  As a general rule LabVIEW has a great clean feel to it but, where it does fall down, it falls hard.  A bit of attention to these problem areas is overdue (IMHO)

Just because its "been that way" since inception is no excuse to call it a feature and not a bug.  The behavior is not what is desired- its a bug in my book.

Count = 177

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It does sorta feel like a bug to me as well. I look at it this way. If I have code on my digram that can be a sub-VI adn I am pressed for time and the code is subject to review by one of my competitors (you really have not lived until you had your code reviewed by THEM ) then making it a sub-VI (as it stands now) WITHOUT manually FIXING everything, THEY could very easily run the VI Analyzer against the code and use the report as evidence that I write bad code. If I did NOT make it a sub-VI, VIA can't ding it for reasons associated with the sub-VI.

So the current implementation of "create sub-VI" if left un-changed, will make my code worse (as judged by teh VIA).

So fixing the "Create sub_VI" such that the result passes the VIA, would be a wonderful improvement.

Ben

[F._Schubert]

Well said Jeff,

I program a lot in old 7.1 where the new VI gives you a 1-ConPane. The best code I've ever written was to hook in to it vi lv_new_vi and get a proper 4x2x2x4 ConPane with a pure white icon.

This is the advanced version of it.

So even if this feature doesn't make it completly in 2011, give us at least the hook.

Felix

[JackDunaway]

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@Darren wrote:

Whenever I select some code and choose Edit > Create SubVI, I always have to spend a few extra minutes doing the following with the new subVI that was created:

• ...
• Rearranging the front panel to look nice
• ...

Wouldn't it be great if some (or all) of these actions could be done automatically?  I've always thought so.  And so has Aristos Queue.  In fact, he has some code ready that, whenever Edit > Create SubVI is invoked, would call a plugin VI (that I have written) that would use VI Scripting to perform those tedious cleanup operations that we must currently do manually.

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I'm reading into your statements, but could this also be a solution for a Front Panel Cleanup?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

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JackDunaway wrote:

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I'm reading into your statements, but could this also be a solution for a Front Panel Cleanup?

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Eventually, yes, though it is not our plan to tackle that in 2011. Having said that, part of why we're doing this as a plug-in VI is so that anyone who wants to go further and/or handle various special cases better, can add their own adjustments. In fact, the plug-in hook might be all we get into 2011, though we're going to ask to get more than that. It's a constant balance of risk vs. reward vs. developer time. Darren and I tend to push the limits, always trying to squeeze one more bit into each release, and we trust our architects and managers to reign us in. They've got a good track record of making such judgements in ways that work out well.

[NIquist]

Wah do ya think, we're MADE out of Kudos or something?

OK, OK.  One more won't kill me for such a good idea.  Now at 182 and counting...

[Stranman]

Kudo'd although I'd rather not see it auto clean up the diagram because if you already apply a wiring style it would just mess it up.