LabVIEW
Which Version of LabVIEW is Least Buggy?
That's a hard one to answer. It depends a lot on what you're doing, what NI toolkits or 3rd party toolks you're using, the hardware you're running on, Windows or Linux-RT. There's a lot of variables.
Anecdotally I've been using LabVIEW 2019 for maybe six months and it feels more stable than 2017 and 2018, but that's just my setup and use case.
A more pragmatic approach is to assume LabVIEW will crash, and plan how you go about recovering from a crash. Keep plenty of code and data backups (in source code control, or even zip files). Use watchdogs for monitoring and kicking critical processes. Add lots of logging to your application so you can see when and where a LabVIEW crash occurs, and try avoid it in future. It's also worth checking out the LabVIEW known issues for your chosen version of LabVIEW for workarounds and problems to avoid.
Can you share any details on how you'll be using LabVIEW? Maybe we can provide pointers on maximising stability for your particluar use case.
Also, don't bother with LabVIEW NXG - it can crash if you look at it funny. It's very much still a beta.
There is no good answer to this question. Basically from a stability point there is not so much difference between versions since at least 2009. Yes I get occasional crashes in every version, but there is a good chance that I caused them myself when debugging external code. Any version can turn bad on you if your computer happens to have a specific buggy driver.
There are so called legendary versions like 7.1.1 which have the fame of having been extremely stable, but that is nothing that can be objectively substantiated. It has been for many indeed the most stable version until then but compared to a recent version it would be hard to find that it is really more stable. I think the fame of 7.1.1 was partly because they made fundamental changes in the UI (project window) and introduction of huge new infrastructure to support libraries and classes in 8.0 and that one was definitely legendary in it’s instabilities.
But I’ve seen horror stories about every single LabVIEW version here, although I never could match them with my experience, and I used every single LabVIEW version since 2.2.1, but have to admit that I mostly skipped 8.0 to go from 7.1.1 directly to 8.21.
A bad memory module or buggy system driver is nowadays usually a bigger thread to a stable LabVIEW experience than LabVIEW itself. So if you want a good LabVIEW experience go with a high quality computer and don’t try to run it on your super duper 3D 4000 frames per second game monster. Professional grade computers do not need and have the highest clock speeds and latest graphics acceleration hardware but that also means that the manufacturer had some time to actually get the drivers somewhat debugged as the changes to the previous design aren’t fundamental but instead gradual.
One rule we used to follow in the past in respect to LabVIEW was to only use one of the latest two SP1 version for project work. But that rule has not been that important anymore in the last 4 or 5 versions.
@BigApple0 wrote:
What version of LabVIEW is the most reliable? Need a version that is stable with few crashes as possible.
8.0 was very 'reliable'. It crashed every 10 minutes!
From there on, it overall got better every version.
It's important to distinguish between IDE crashes and RTE crashes. For me, once a program runs stable, regardless the version, LabVIEW has been stable for a long time. The IDE crashes (it still does), but with the autosaving it's less troublesome. 7.1 was very stable, but didn't include OO. Most of my crashes are when performing complicated class changes (changing naming, inheritance and disk location without saving\closing the project).
Search LabVIEW like a graph! 