Leaderboard

Even if he had, he is factually still right. The differences are small in the last few years. That is to say that there haven't really been ground breaking new features in a new release in quite some time. Personally I'm quite fine with that as I rather have a stable development environment than a new UX compatible UI widget set that will be obsoleted by the next Google developer conference or Microsoft cheerleader party again . That said we still do not start new projects on a non-S1 version of LabVIEW. Everybody is allowed to install the latest version, but what version is used for a particular project is defined by the project leader at the beginning of the project and that is not going to be a non service pack version. Since development of projects is typically always a multiple people task nowadays there is also no room left for someone to just go with whatever version of LabVIEW he prefers. Version changes during a project principally don't happen, with a few very rare cases for longer running projects when a new version of LabVIEW or its drivers supports a specific functionality much better or fixes a fundamental bug. Not even for bugs that can be worked around will we go and upgrade to a new version during a project. The reason for this is obvious. A LabVIEW program as we write them is not just LabVIEW alone. It consists of all kinds of software components, NI and MS written, third party and in house developments. Any change of a component in this mix can have far reaching consequences that don't always have to be visible right away. For in house developed software we can quickly debug the issue and make a fix if necessary, so there the risk is contained, but for external software it is much harder. It often feels like a black hole when reporting bugs. It's almost impossible to even track down if and when a bug was fixed. This is both for NI and other external software similar, but considering the tight contact with NI it feels like being used. The whole bug reporting feels very like a one sided communication even if I follow threads on the fora. For problems reported there, if there is at all a reaction from some blue bird, it often is a rather standard reaction where the poster is thanked for reporting a problem and then a number of standard questions about version numbers and involved software, which sometimes has no relevance to the problem at hand and sometimes could even be inferred from the first post already if read properly. This sometimes goes on for a few more posts like this and then the thread dies, without any further final resolving post by any blue bird. It may have been solved offline but the reader on the forum doesn't see this. It looks like a back and forth of a more or less related or unrelated question and answer conversation and then it vaporizes like a tiny water stream in the desert. In addition I'm myself not a proponent of installing always the latest and greatest software version if not really necessary. And developing also tools and libraries for reuse it is again not an option to only develop them for the last version. So even if a bug gets fixed I might not profit from that immediately but due to the feeling of being so disconnected anyways it doesn't even feel like it is getting fixed ever.