Skill Set

[Flamboyant]

Hi All,

I am a Senior Software Engineer with 3.4 years experience in LabVIEW. My only expertise is LabVIEW. As I go up the career ladder, I feel that just knowing LabVIEW is not sufficient. I would like to know your opinion on this and what are the other skills that any one who's career is in the Test and Measurement domain must acquire.

I recently had an offer to work with a company where they give least preference to LabVIEW. They say that LabVIEW is not quick and hence they prefer LabWindows/CVI or Visual Basic and TestStand. I was in doubt whethet to accept that offer or not. Finally I rejected that offer owing to the fact that I am not familiar with C or VB.

So after this incident I am in doubt, whether to take up the challange next time. Is it worthwhile to take the risk or is it sufficient to stick to LabVIEW.

All sugessions are welcome

Thanks in Advance

LabVIEWan

[SteveChandler]

That is really two topics

Some useful skills to have that are applicable to any programming language are web services and database programming.

As for LabVIEW being slower it just sounds like they had the all too common bad experience with a poor programmer. LabVIEW is uniquely susceptible to that since it is so easy to pick up. I think that company ended up with some horrible bug ridden non-maintainable code and blame the language and not the bad programmer.

So if you stick with LabVIEW just make sure you really learn to do it right. The best way to prove to yourself and potential employers that you know the right way to program in LabVIEW is to go and get certified.

[Mark_Yedinak]

I would also look at the industries that you will be focusing your career on. What skills outside of actual programming are required. Is there specific hardware and equipment that would be useful to have experience with? At a minimal a general knowledge of networking is always useful. Training specific to test creation is always beneficial. Designing and creating good efficient test cases is a skill in and of itself. Increased understanding of OOP is also a good skill to have. OOP techniques, patterns and general design is language agnostic. Application and system design is also a good skill. As Steve mentioned LabVIEW is susceptible to very poor program design. Having a very good understanding of application architecture and design will be very helpful.

I agree with Steve that going through the certification process is a very good experience.