I agree wholeheartily.

I have experience in Pascal, Delphi (Arguably the same thing), C++ and C# in addition to LabVIEW.

Given the choice I will start every project with LabVIEW once it has remotely anything to do with hardware control, parallel processing or visualisation.

LabVIEW is easy to get familiar with but really quite detailed. In other words, it's easy to just get enough knowledge to shoot yourself in the foot with. Because it's easy to get started with people tend to disregard solid software engineering principles. Needless to say that larger projects will start falling apart if modularity is a word only other people use.

I'm programming with it for over 10 years and I can't keep up with the new additions in functionality (OOP being the most important one recently).

You know that you can bind external DLLs relatively easily in LabVIEW don't you?

There's nothing stopping you from using a DLL from an open-source program for the image processing.

Shane.

Deary deary me.

You never grasped the idea behind LabVIEW did you?

You mention bundling of wires as an "enhancement"? It's a basic functionality of all modern programming languages (record in Pascal, struct in others).

Yes, LabVIEW's programming model is significantly different from "traditional" text-based languages but it's extremely powerful and flexible. The fact that you only attribute these characteristics to "text-code programming" is mind boggling to anyone who is properly skilled in LabVIEW.

You're probably not aware thatg LabVIEW has inherent parallel execution (part of the terrible programming paradigm you mention). You seem to find one of LabVIEW's biggest advantages as a weakpoint.... The graphical layout of the code makes the code (when you know what you're doing) hugely intuitive and debugging is certainly a LOT faster in LabVIEW than the equivalent text-based program. DAta types are clearly distinguishable based on colour, the number of array dimensions by the thickness of the wire and so on. All lead to a huge increase in "visibility" of the code in question.

The fact that distributed computing is relatively easy in LabVIEW probably wasn't known to you either?

If you're willing to actually LEARN the programming paradigm of LabVIEW, I guarantee you'll be rewarded with a very flexible and very powerful and scalable programming language.

Courses are STRONGLY recommended in order to be able to properly unlock the power behind G.

Shane

Sigh

How many times must we seasoned LabVIEW programmers deal with rubbish of this sort.

Yes there are things LabVIEW is cumbersome for, Yes it is targetted at test&measurement. So?

As to people who refer to LabVIEW as "programming for kindergartners" he's simply never grasped the idea of data flow and inherent parallel processing. Nowadays with the availability of multi-core processors a reality the FREE multi-core usage of LabVIEW is of huge benefit.

Scalable architectures are just as feasible and possible and also a reality in LabVIEW as with any other language. Components, Objects whatever you like, it's all there.

Shane.

Your knowledge of LabVIEW seems horribly incomplete. Somebody who starts programming (in ANY language) without trainingg will not be able to handle large programs, not even LabVIEW can solve that problem. As a seasoned LabVIEW programmer I can say that it's quite easy to develop programs which perform parallel processing, network communications and so on. As for "Stay away from LabVIEW if you can"... Sounds almost like a dare instead of a warning. LabVIEW is becoming more and more powerful with each generation. Shane

Oh not true not true. I'm a used of LAbVIEW for well over a decade and there are very few things which can't be done with LabVIEW if the programmer is experienced enough. Parallel processing, near real-time to real-time.... Of course LabVIEW is marketed as "simple" but this belays the huge sophistication of the system beneath. The marketing of LabVIEW as "Simple" pisses off a lot of seasoned programmers because a lot of people start thinking like you do. Shane.