You go into your doctors office and he says you need to have a procedure immediatly to remove some part of your body. You might consult one more doctor but at no point do you actually truely question the actions he is about to take even if it means removing a piece of your body.

On the other hand you go to get your computer fixed. The IT person tells you that your computer is slow and cant do anything because you have 39 viruses and some untold amounts of spyware on your computer. He suggests that you should backup all your documents and let him wipe the system clean. You disagree with him and tell him to install more ram to fix your computer because of an article you read in the paper. He installs it begrugingly and you return a week later having the same problems and stating that the ram is bad and he needs to replace it. rinse and repeat.

The reason IT people are nasty at times is because everyone believes they are an expert when it comes to computers. It is somewhat insulting that everyday someone will tell you to do something that you explicitly told them was a bad idea.

Whoa there, cowboys. Before anyone starts trashing LabVIEW or defending it too harshly, I'd highly recommend doing things the right way.

First off, you can demo LabVIEW online at this link or download an evaluation version at this link (pretty big download).

Next, check out the LabVIEW Introduction Course - 3 Hours Long or preferably the LabVIEW Introduction course - 6 Hours Long. I believe these were written for LabVIEW 7 (latest version is 8.0.1), but you can still get the idea.

Graphical and dataflow-based programming is much different, and it's not going to be a seamless transition. However, after working with it heavily for as little as 4 months, I am HOOKED. If you sent me your C code, I'd be lost and frustrated. Now, if someone sends me their LabVIEW code, I can "just see it" -- like Neo at the end of the Matrix. It's hard to explain, but it just makes sense at a glance now.

Another cool thing that Slashdotters would like is that there is a LabVIEW forum that is supported by both National Instruments employees and LabVIEW enthusiasts. Some guys in there just love helping you out, just as you've seen in the Linux community. forums.ni.com. Very friendly community (although if you are a flamer, NI employees won't say anything, but other customers sure will!)

So try to understand it before bashing it, or just ignore it. But LabVIEW *IS* a programming language -- just something much different than anything you're used to.

PS: No, LabVIEW is not open source. But it's "open enough" for most people.

Oh, and if you check the job listings, you'll see that knowing LabVIEW can get you a very nice salary in some industries. It's the defacto standard for anything in test and measurement, and is branching out to other things now.