LabView

Question

I've just discovered this newsgroup, and looking at the questions I'm
astonished at the sheer difficulty of doing the simplest thing in LabView.
Downloading a special toolkit just to use a right mouse click?!!! Messing
about with extra nodes to construct a simple ring? (see discontinuous
sliders below). More toolboxes to change cursors?
This is the problem with graphical interfaces - they look so gorgeous and
simple at the demo, with salesmen zap controls and graphs right left and
centre, but in the real world they're a nightmare!
Go look at LabWindows CVI. You can do virtually anything straight out the
box. And I mean anything not just data acquisition. I once wrote a network
backup routine with it. In fact it's so comprehensive that NI wants to kill
it. They just released version 6.0 (more of the same with LabView type
buttons) but they didn't make much fuss over it. No special release of the
newsletter to trumpet their new achievement. It's a lot harder to licence a
program that by definition has no limits to hardware I/O and builds run-time
exe's as a matter of course.
So wake up, see the light, and read Kernighan + Ritchie while you still can!

Answer 1

Obviously, I am new to LabView, and am trying to bring myself up to speed
using the evaluation kit. I have found the learning curve extremely steep,
probably not helped by a half-lifetime of C experience. Really simple
things like moving controls on the page were difficult (CVI doesn't have [or
need] a 'pick' tool)! The first thermometer demo took 30 mins to do in
LabView, as I couldn't work out how to set the ranges, since I expect
everything to be in a properties box, rather than written directly on the
page. It took me 90seconds in CVI, from to a runtime
executable. And then it ran about 5 times as fast. Doubtless programming
LabView gets much quicker with familiarity, though as I write this questions
are apperaing on array handling that would be second nature in C.
It would be easy to trade punches with 'killer features', but it does seem
to me that LabView struggles with any decision/program flow activities,
whilst making straightforward monitoring a doddle. Your comments about
memory problems and dodgy pointers are very common, and are surely one of
the principle reasons that punters are choosing LabView over CVI. Competent
programming is all thats required to combat them though, so are people so
distrustful of their own abilities? Am I bragging to say that it's never
happened to me? And on top of all that, I can make direct calls to the
Windows API, though actually I've hardly ever needed to.
But my main gripe is that I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into an
area that I consider to be deeply inferior (with or without good reason) to
CVI. The user base is 5-10 times that of CVI, and growing. Money forces
the change.
And at least there IS a LabView newsgroup, there is no CVI counterpart!
"Craig Graham" wrote in message
news:3bcee527@newsgroups....
> As I understand it, LabWindows is the Labview GUI engine but with a C code
> backend instead of G. By the very nature of it, C has longer development
> times than G. If there are things we wish to do that are not in G, then we
> must go into C, by a code interface node or by making a DLL call. What
> you're saying is that because some aspects require lower level C code, we
> should scrap G entirely, even though in the vast majority of situations G
is
> perfectly adequate.
>
> You say you're suprised at the sheer difficulty of doing certain things;
how
> long would it take to, for example, search for an instance of a regular
> expression within a string just using native C code, without going to an
> external library? Sure there are function libraries you can go out to- but
> if you have an issue with "special toolkits" in Labview, I'd guess you're
> against their analogues in C. So you'd have to start at the ground up and
> write a function to do it before you can get on with the program in hand.
> Labview already has such functions as native G primitives.
>
> Your message appears to be based on the qustions that appear here, with no
> experience of Labview itself. That is always a dangerous foundation on
which
> to criticise a language. You may take note of the fact that on Usenet
there
> is *one* Labview group, whilst there are a great many C groups. You may
also
> note that there are no problems discussed in this group that are due to
the
> use of uninitialised pointers, failures to allocate and deallocate memory
> and other such things that can waste a great deal of time in C coding.
>
> Siddown wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > I've just discovered this newsgroup, and looking at the questions I'm
> > astonished at the sheer difficulty of doing the simplest thing in
LabView.
> > Downloading a special toolkit just to use a right mouse click?!!!
Messing
> > about with extra nodes to construct a simple ring? (see discontinuous
> > sliders below). More toolboxes to change cursors?
> >
> > This is the problem with graphical interfaces - they look so gorgeous
and
> > simple at the demo, with salesmen zap controls and graphs right left and
> > centre, but in the real world they're a nightmare!
>
>
>