[OT] Graphical vs text

[lordsathish]

But Text based languages seem to use considerabily less amount of memory and the are quite fast too...

I think graphical development capability comes with lot of memory consumption....?

[pritam]

MS Visual Studio is another graphical developement enviorment. Right now this enviorment is limited to Robotic developement.

[Mr._Jim]

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lordsathish wrote:

But Text based languages seem to use considerabily less amount of memory and the are quite fast too...

I think graphical development capability comes with lot of memory consumption....?

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I think in most cases you're probably right.  However, narrowing the scope of the argument to a compiled executable, there are a variety of reasons for high memory consumption.  My observation is that many people who develop in LabVIEW emply poor practices that increase the liklihood of sub-par performance.  It's like any other language in that respect.  Many assume that it's an "easy" environment and neglect to pay attention to the housekeeping details. There's an enormous difference between the performance of a well written LabVIEW application and a poorly written one.

In the scope of the development environment, I would agree that the complexity of the UI mandates the use of more resources, and I don't think very many people would argue against that.  Honestly, though, I think the executable is where performance and memory consumption count the most.  (Unless you're running your applications as source code)

Another thought:  I believe that much of the resource consumption is also due to the complexity of the hardware interface stuff.  Namely, all of the drivers such as DAQmx that are running in the background.  We take for granted quite a bit of overhead that's involved in efficiently interfacing with hardware.

It's like the Mac vs. PC argument or partisan politics - I don't think we'll ever stop debating this subject.  It's funny how the topic just keeps surfacing over and over.  

Oh, wait - what was the subject matter of this thread?

[Ben]

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lordsathish wrote:

But Text based languages seem to use considerabily less amount of memory ...

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The source code file, well yes, but I am more than happy to make the PC work harder so I can develop faster. 

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lordsathish wrote:

... and the are quite fast too...

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In most cases the machine code produced by LV is every bit as fast as that produced using text languages.

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lordsathish wrote:

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I think graphical development capability comes with lot of memory consumption....?

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As mentioned previously, many newbies write code that squanders memory useage. It has always been possible to use memory efficiently in LV but it required more thought than most people wanted to invest since memory is cheap.

So...

Well written LV programs are as fast and efficient as programs developed in diferent languages.

The two biggest difference I have seen between developing in text based lanuages and LV are;

1) I can read a well writtin LV VI in seconds. (Try to do that in text) 

2)  I NEVER have to find and fix a syntax error.*

Ben

* At one time I ws being refered too as "The LV Evangilist", any wonder why?

Message Edited by Ben on 11-26-2008 08:12 AM

[Ben]

For more reading on the subject of LV vs others see this thread andthis thread.

Ben

[lordsathish]

Then where could i find how to write good an efficient LabVIEW codes....?

[Ben]

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lordsathish wrote:
Then where could i find how to write good an efficient LabVIEW codes....?

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This list of Tags can get you started.

Monitoring the discusions in this forum,

Monitoring your CPU using task manager while you test your code, and

Benchmarking alternative code constructs will also help.

As you go if you can't figure out why the  code is running as fast as you would expect, start a thread and let us help out.

Just trying to help,

Ben