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It's a general tendency I have noticed on LabVIEW forums, although maybe less so on the NI forums. I also signed up at the German LabVIEW forum and while 5 or 6 years ago you had every day several new topics varying from the newbie question of how to do a simple file IO operation to the advanced topic of system architecture and interfacing to external code, nowadays it is maybe a tenth of that with most topics ranging in the more trivial category. The German forum had and has a somewhat broader target range since it was equally meant for beginners and advanced users while LAVA started by the nature of its name as a forum for somewhat more advanced topics, although I would like to think that we never really gave a newbie a bad feeling when posting here, as long as that person didn't violate just about every possible netiquet there is. The German forum may have one additional effect that may contribute to it getting less traffic and that is that English has also in Germany got the defacto standard in at least engineering. But without having any numbers to really compare I would say that the German forum and LAVA have seen similar decay in number of new posts and answers in general. And yes I have been wondering about that. Where did those people go? I feel that some went to the NI forums as they got more accessible over time but I do think that a more important aspect is that LabVIEW has gotten in many places just one of many tools to tackle software problems whereas in the past it was more often THE tool in the toolbox of many developers. That is probably a somewhat jaded view from personal experience but I certainly see it in other places too when I get there during my job. And Shaun definitely addresses another point when he mentions that LabVIEW innovation has slowly been getting to the point of stagnation in the last 5 to 10 years. That would hurt specialized forums like LAVA or a local forum like the German forum most likely a lot more than the NI forum, which catches most of the more trivial user questions of how to get something done or about perceived or real bugs. I'm not sure in how far the NI forum has been seeing a similar slow down. Personally I feel it might have been getting a little less active overal in comparison but what is more apparent is the fact that there too the general level of advanced topics has been slowing down, which would be in accordance about little to no innovations in LabVIEW. The interesting things have been discussed and brainstormed about and very little new things got added that would spur new discussions. What is posted nowadays is mostly about problems when using LabVIEW or some hardware or how to get a simple job down quickly! Is LabVIEW dead? I wouldn't feel so as I still see it used in many places but the excitement about using LabVIEW has been somewhat lost by many. It's a specialized tool to do certain things and in a way the only one in town doing it in this way, but by far not the only one you can use to do these things. In fact there have been many new and not so new possibilities about doing it (I see for instance regularly situations where people have decided to use Python for everything even the UI, which is not something I would easily consider) and the general target has been shifting too. If you want to do internet related stuff then LabVIEW is definitely not the most easy solution and also not the most powerful one. Engineering simply has been getting a lot broader in the last 10 years and while measurement and testing where you directly tinker with hardware and sensors still is quite important, there has been another big market developed that has very little to do with this and where the qualities of LabVIEW don't shine as bright or even show nasty oxidation spots. Maybe the fact that LabVIEW always was designed as a closed environment with very limited possiblities to be extended directly by 3rd parties has hurt it to the point of being forced into the niche market it always tried to protect for itself. It will be interesting to see how NI is going to attempt to fix that. The stagnation in LabVIEW development is something which supposedly happened because they focused the energy on a fundamental redesign of the LabVIEW platform, which has dragged on longer than hoped for and claimed more resources than was good for the existing LabVIEW platform.

I moved this thread to the lounge. The Wiki content still exists, I think. It has some technical issues to resolve. I will take a cursory look into the effort it will take to resurrect it. Before it went dark, the ability to edit was only enabled for account holders and I got zero requests from people to create an account in over 5 years. But I guess it only takes 1 person with determination to get the ball rolling.

Hey, Michael, I think that LAVA is great and I prefer it to the noise and style of the NI forums. Thanks for keeping it running. I appreciate the expertise, brightness, and time-generosity of the frequent posters here! I'm a very infrequent poster because my job takes all my time. I liked the Info-Labview email list, too, before I moved over to LAVA, but that list lingered way past its expiration, ha ha. I don't think LAVA is at that point, I think it's still great. 10 new topics per week rates as an active forum, and it looks like everyone gets replies to their questions. ShaunR hit the nail on the head about Labview stagnating for the last 5 years. You can see the slowdown in innovation, energy, and buzz. Probably this is natural given what's happening in high tech and computing. Labview is such a unique beast - beautifully engineered, hugely powerful, alone at the top as the best solution for test & automation. Engineers will continue to choose it as their platform, although it looks like zero growth in the new-adopters-per-year figure. It's weird for me to have spent half my life immersed in a single vendor's toolset. My livelihood is maybe too dependent on a thriving NI. But I still really enjoy the work, and there are not enough Labview experts to fill the demand. -Joe

Disclaimer: I don't mean to be negative in this post but I'm telling it as I see it. I may be wrong (no surprises there) but if we value frank and open discussions, here we go. I post a lot more on the NI forums than I do here. I like helping out possible future LV gurus. The word guru apparently means "He who dispels the darkness". Many of you have much brighter torches than I do but we need to spread the light and spread it far and wide. The more we withdraw into ourselves, the brighter the light may seem, but the fewer people benefit from it. To be honest I think LAVA has a bit of an elitist feel to it which does not help LAVA or its visitors (or potential visitors) in any way besides feeling smug about being good enough to be here (the people here are undoubtedy very knowledgable, this is undisputed). This is why I try to bring also more advanced topics to the NI forum. Chances are that it will reach more people. If we decide to only hang around with people we think of as our peers (because the ego boost feels nice) we either create an unaccessible wealth of knowledge which benefits only a select few or we actually miss out on changes in the commujnity and end up getting left behind. Neither outcome is particularly appealing to me personally. I come to LAVA when I need something for me which I think is uninteresting for others. I go to NI.com when I want my knowledge (or possible answers to my questions) to be as accessible as possible in order to benefit the LabVIEW ecosystem as a whole. If we insist on creating an "us" v "them" atmosphere then the gulf will only keep increasing which will of course stroke our egos even more which will increase the gulf which will......oh dear. I remember a story from way back when the computer game "Doom" was released. One report was that the game was technically brilliant and fun but the reporter tired of it quickly. It turns out he was playing the game in only the first room and never realised that what looked like a wall was a door to the rest of the first level (and to all other levels - he was playing like only the first 1% of the game). I think it's fine showing off technical prowess to users but if we don't help newcomers find the door the appeal will be very limited. Sure, not everything that comes through the door will be welcome but that's life (or Doom, I can't remember ). If all of this makes people wary of being overrun by the unwashed masses then I think a paid subscription model is the only way to go. But I severely doubt if that will increase the number of posts. For me personally the bottom line is that if I had to choose between the NI forum and LAVA, I would choose the NI forum because I think the effort spent there is maybe less valuable to me in the short term but is essential to the longer term health of the community. Don't get me wrong, I value LAVA greatly and have learned a lot here. I don't want to see it go. I also don't want to see it get increasingly isolated.

No, because you didn’t identify what package you want.