Measurement Studio vs LabVIEW Discussion

[Lycangeek]

oops! Sorry, try this one

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=features&message.id=2

[penewman]

If I continue to use LabVIEW, I will lose valuable programming skills.

Visual Studio naturally integrates with other commonly used Microsoft applications and technologies.

For the computer literate,  NI Measurement Studio (for Visual Studio) is the way to go.

If you have an interest in Programming and demand Rapid Application Development, Visual Studio is the solution.

LabVIEW skills are not a great benefit to my resume.

I don't want to be typecast as a Test & Measurement guy.

The worldwide demand for Visual Studio programming far exceeds the demand for the LabVIEW graphical tool.

cheers

[batesbc]

I wouldn't say that you'll *lose* programming skills, per se, just that you'll be better at LabVIEW than you will at .Net. Certainly specializing in LabVIEW (a language that isn't terribly popular outside the test/control/measurement universe) could affect your career adversely, but that depends on what you want to do. As always in any field, if you don't continue to learn new things (be it .Net, Perl, LabVIEW, Python, Lisp, m68k assembly, or things like UI design, distributed computing, etc.) your career is probably going to dead-end.

[LVB]

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@serpos wrote:
If I continue to use LabVIEW, I will lose valuable programming skills.

Visual Studio naturally integrates with other commonly used Microsoft applications and technologies.

For the computer literate,  NI Measurement Studio (for Visual Studio) is the way to go.

If you have an interest in Programming and demand Rapid Application Development, Visual Studio is the solution.

LabVIEW skills are not a great benefit to my resume.

I don't want to be typecast as a Test & Measurement guy.

The worldwide demand for Visual Studio programming far exceeds the demand for the LabVIEW graphical tool.

cheers

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This doesn't really make good sense to me.  Why not use a combination of LabVIEW for control and .NET for GUI?  That way you will have experience with both.

[penewman]

if you are familiar with programming, LabVIEW has nothing to offer

if you are not a programmer/computer geek, LabVIEW is a fantastic graphical tool !

it is not a programming language
it is not for people with programming skills / background

IMHO, mixing the two is ugly and unneccessary



cheers

[batesbc]

At the risk of going off-topic:
LabVIEW is a programming language, just not a traditional (imperative, C++/C#/Java-ish) one. Data flow programming (like functional programming, ala Lisp/Scheme) is a different way of looking at things, and sometimes seeing a problem from a different angle helps eliminate some of the complexity. I'll admit I thought the same thing about it not being a "real" programming language until I looked at some of the research and such behind data flow. While you can do (just about) anything with C# / .Net that you want, there are some things that LabVIEW is better at than .Net. Different tools for different jobs.

On-topic, hopefully:
Speaking of Scheme/Lisp, and dreaming of (+ (have cake) (eat-it-too cake)), I think expanding some of the ActiveX support would be the easiest way to allow more languages (not just .Net) to talk to LabVIEW. I know Lisp can (with some difficulty) talk to ActiveX, and it would be nice to be able to do things like GetTypeDescriptor("controlname"), and have the ExportVIStrings/ImportVIStrings commands be able to take pstring arrays instead of filenames, to allow more programmatic discovery of what controls a given VI has available. That or open up the entire property hierarchy to ActiveX, FrontPanel.Controls[] and all.

Edit: Minor grammatical fix, because I haven't had my coffee yet...

Message Edited by batesbc on 03-13-2006 08:22 AM

[tst]

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@serpos wrote:

if you are familiar with programming, LabVIEW has nothing to offer
...
it is not a programming language
it is not for people with programming skills / background

IMHO, mixing the two is ugly and unneccessary

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All these statements (with the possible exception of the last one) are very inaccurate. While LV is not a programming language (but a compiler) G, the language underlying it, very much is.

For those with little or no programming experience it "merely" offers the ability to create the tools they need to do whatever it is they need to do without being bothered with the usual problems of programming.

For those who do have the experience, though, it offers much more. For instance:

• It offers the ability to easily port code between different platforms (Windows\Mac\Linux\PalmOS\PocketPC\FPGA\Pharlap and some others, even though not all those ports would work perfectly). I'd like to see you do that with .Net.
• It allows to develop code much more quickly than most other languages and to easily test it from the bottom up.
• It compiles your code at design-time, not run-time, thus allowing the compiler to adapt the code and detect syntax errors in real time, not when you run the code.
• It inherently supports multiple tasks without doing anything more complex than writing n pieces of code.
• For some tasks (talking to certain kinds of hardware, measuring and so on) it is much more suitable than other languages.
• It's much more fun and easy to use (and that's important no matter how much experience you have).

LV is by no means a perfect and complete programming tool (I wouldn't use it to write a high speed 3D game, for instance), but for any application where it is viable (and those are by no means limited to reading NI DAQ cards) it would be my prefered development tool, due to the speed and ease of use. From the way you talk about it sounds like you either don't know it at all or only had a brief encounter with it and failed to see what it can really do (e.g. you only saw the "express" VIs which allow you to configure a task through a wizard instead of through building the code on your own).

I assure you that this is the opinion of many advanced users of LV which hold various degrees (including in computer sciences) and have been programming for decades and I suggest you thoroughly try LV before dismissing it like this.