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"I hate LabView" topic


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Those guys are REAL programmers....

About 20 years ago I was sticking around late in the office to teach myself C. One of the hard core Fortran Cobol types asked "Why bother?" ... it is so cryptic etc. I think there was a similar thread about switch over from horses to automobiles. My appraoch is sorta symbolized by Jim's avatar. Technology is a wave were you have to stay on the leading edge. Failure to do so will result in a wipe out and you will have to start all over again.

Ben

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... similarly I don't pay attention to the all-out LabVIEW supporters who refused to acknowledge its limitations and weaknesses.

True, LabVIEW has limitations. That's why we're all here pushing the limits right?

It's also true that you can have a successful lifelong career in LabVIEW and even run a software company that uses LabVIEW to its core, without ever having to touch a sigle line of text code. Oh, and it's fun too. yes.gif

The nice thing about all this: I never even once throughout the years doubted my decision to base my career around LabVIEW.

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Several of the posters appeared to be college-aged kids and, like nearly all college-aged kids, possess an abundance of ideology and a noticable lack of real world experience. Perhaps someday they'll understand the "real programming" != "imperative programming." Most industry vets I encounter readily acknowledge that each language has domains it works well in and domains it doesn't work well in, even though almost everyone has a preference.

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... I never even once throughout the years doubted my decision to base my career around LabVIEW.

I had been thinking this way for over 12 years ... since V5.. It has only been in the last 6 months or so LV has really rattled my perception of the universe. 2009 and 2010 have been the occasional poke-in-the-eye after another of quirks and workarounds and glitches and potential show-stopping nightmares. I've spent more time on the phone with NI tech support in the last 2 months than I have in the previous 12 years combined.

throwpc.gif

But I'm still part of the Flock. I trust NI has been paying attention and V 2011 will be a true "stability" release. Been doing this way too long to give up now. I'll be writing LV code until I die.

thumbup1.gif

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I had been thinking this way for over 12 years ... since V5.. It has only been in the last 6 months or so LV has really rattled my perception of the universe. 2009 and 2010 have been the occasional poke-in-the-eye after another of quirks and workarounds and glitches and potential show-stopping nightmares. I've spent more time on the phone with NI tech support in the last 2 months than I have in the previous 12 years combined.

Those were the days rolleyes.gif. When men were men, and sheep were worried. (and the known issues would fit on a cigarette packet beer_mug.gif) < wispy reminiscing emoticon>

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Those were the days rolleyes.gif. When men were men, and sheep were worried. (and the known issues would fit on a cigarette packet beer_mug.gif) < wispy reminiscing emoticon>

2011 is only going to be as good as the Beta testers make it. That da#$ EULA for the Beta's (paraphrasing now... if you run into trouble with the beta code, please report the issue but don't count on us to help..) keeps all of the serious development testing out of the picture until the official release. As long as there is just a bunch of people poke around the theri spare time on toy projects.

G-Story

One of the most solid version of LV was LV 6.1. AS i understand the back story, Albert Gevens really beat that Beta version up. His work was so important in version 6.1 that NI recognized him for his efforts and made him a ... MVP or a Featured Developers or some such.

What I feel would fix the buggey releases:

Cash.

NI should go through thier records of bug reports and find a core set of bug-hunters and approach them about paying them to develop in the beta version, AND back them up with a commitment to fix any bug they find prior to the offical release.

From where I sit I am still seeing the same pattern repeateded over and over.

"dot-zero" version released and I sit back and wait for the bug reports. I avoid upgrading except where my customers have selected the blue pill and I am forced to take the dive into the hole with them. The I go into a routine where I am calling support almost daily with conversation that end with "Well senf me an e-mail with the CAR number and I have a hrad time believing anyone who knows what they are doing actually tested this!".

2010 story

NITS here in Pittsburgh, I was selected to do the Darren routine about the new features in LV 2010. So blew through his material in about 15 minutes and started answer random questions from the crowd when I found myself trying to edit the icon while they watched. Little did I realize the "New and degraded" icon editor was busting full of bugs ( ctrl-V double paste, no drag after select argh!!!). I don't think any of the crowd realized I was dealing with a bug because I stopped and "Pulled a cake out of the oven" to show the final results.

As a consultatant I also find the bugs particulary frustrating because I have to deal with customers asking "Why do you like LabVIEW so much if they are shipping crap?"

I did not expect this post to turn into a rant but I guess it did.

:beer_mug:

Ben

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Yeah I was getting defensive at first when reading the "I hate LabView" post. I would read a bullet point then come up with a counter argument. Soon I realized that one reason why he hates LabVIEW is because he is uneducated on how to use LabVIEW. After coming to this realization I became less defensive, and felt sorry for him. I can hate anything that I don't know anything about. I hate the internet because it costs money, I hate movies because they are so long, I hate water because it has no taste, I have brocolli because it looks like small trees, I hate snow because it's cold (okay that one is valid).

And I just want to say that 7.1 was the best version of all time...in my opinion.

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I'd agree that 7.1 was the most stable but that may also have involved the aspects of LV that I use the most.

Yes, other languages have their place and, were I to program primarily or even significantly more than I do i those domains, I'd consider using them where they excelled. I'm not a "gun for hire" at this point; so I have the luxury of essentially developing in-house for a single "project" (that of course wasn't even a project until....) and that makes it very easy to stay with LV, notice the bugs and then work around them. And in general that's worked pretty well. I used to be an "early adopters" of the new releases but got burned on 2009 when I discovered some major issues (and, yes, filed CARs, went down to visit LV, etc, etc). throwpc.gif

Ultimately all of that has gotten resolved -- it just took time and not all of that was NI's fault. It's too long of a story to go into here but one of the things that I like most about LV is that it is supported by a single company. rolleyes.gif

And, no, I'm not forgetting LAVA et al thumbup1.gif but, officially at least, there is a single company out there that does except bug reports, does file CARs and then is, generally pretty clear about its intentions to address that bug or not. With C, C++, etc you have so many 3rd party "add ons" that are ESSENTIAL and those can change, IME, in the blink of an eye. I can't afford that kind of unpredictability for my work. And I do have a life outside of programming (didn't used to) so I'd far rather be out golfing than scouring the net to find the latest .net assembly or DLL or whatever to solve (again) a problem created by the versioning of the prior .net assembly, DLL or whatever that USED TO work.frusty.gif

hmmmm, I guess a bit ranty but it's early in the morning and I'm only halfway through my first cup...then again maybe even though it's early it's time to switch....beer_mug.gif

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For me; 8.x was the worst (pick any version). I almost cried with joy when 2009 came out. biggrin.gif I've skipped 2010 altogether - far to slow loading dynamic VIs (which many of my designs use) and no real new features or improvements that I either want or use (maybe the cluster hiding, but that's about it). It''s only used for playing and downloading stuff from LAVA - nothing serious. If 2011 is a bug-fixed version of 2010, then unless it fixes the bugs relevant to me, then that probably will get skipped as well.

I'm pleased that NI now have yearly releases with defined periodic bug fixes, because now I know not to even think about upgrading until SP1 is released laugh.gif

Oh. And don't get me started on beta testing biggrin.gif

Edited by ShaunR
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Because I seriously started to use LabVIEW just from version 8.2 and just barely touched 7.1 as self education, I don't feel 8.x are worst. But I'm having unrecognized problem with building applications in 2009. Old projects converted from 8.6, no matter big or small, just can not be built in 2009 that main vi would not be broken. Workaround is to turn on debug option in build, that helps but make executables 3 times bigger. I didn't try 2010 yet to see if this issue is fixed there.

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It might be good to start a new thread about this. I went through quite a bit with NI to get my 8.x apps to build correctly in 2009. They were actually continuing ports and developments since 5.x and it's been quite interesting to me to see how little NI has tested such legacy code when moving to a new version. So start a new thread re: the specific build issues you've experienced and someone here will likely be able to help you out -- perhaps even me!

Because I seriously started to use LabVIEW just from version 8.2 and just barely touched 7.1 as self education, I don't feel 8.x are worst. But I'm having unrecognized problem with building applications in 2009. Old projects converted from 8.6, no matter big or small, just can not be built in 2009 that main vi would not be broken. Workaround is to turn on debug option in build, that helps but make executables 3 times bigger. I didn't try 2010 yet to see if this issue is fixed there.

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this is the right thread for me to drop a few lines :)

most of the stuff posted on that "I hate LabVIEW page" is pure bullsh**! Those guys simply should do a Basics I + II course or read a book like "LabVIEW for Newbies" or something like that and most of their "problems" would be gone. If the don't understand how to use LabVIEW and how it works, it's not the failure of the Tool or NI, it's their fault.

If I read things like:

Inability to write descriptive comments!

I'd like to answer: why don't you stupid use the VI Documentation? and why don't you use the text-tool in the BD?

Inability to name variables!!!

--> have you ever heard about the text-tool? You can even change the colour of your text with the color tool, really! ;)

Sequence structures–the most cumbersome way possible for the LabView creators to have tried to rectify the problem that sometimes

--> ROFL! you need a Basics I course man, really, or just use Java, C# or whatever. You are to stupid to understand what dataflow means and what it is good for ...

noone, who is serious with LV would really care about the complaints of a no0b which is not willing to learn at least some of the basics.

LV is a great tool and a great programming language and I love it (and I earn most of my bucks with it ;) …) but there are also some points I really hate:

This yearly major version updates really suck! If someone would ask me I’d say: a major release once in 5 years would be enough, like Microsoft does with Visual Studio. And of course: all VIs written with this major Release should be compatible to all the other minor releases of that major release.

The quality of the new releases sucks! I’d really like to se a stable version like 7.1.1 again and I hate it being an unpaid beta-tester in a so-called “release”. What I need is a stable version, I can work with and rely on if things come tough. I don’t need all those new features, where most of them are mainly good for marketing, but almost useless in production. I need reliability, stability and features that improve my daily work and help me getting faster, more precise, etc.

For me, the behavior of NI over the last 5 years is like (in the dilbert cartoon posted above): who the fu** needs customers? All we want is the money! And I really don’t like being treated like that!

cheers,

CB

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... The quality of the new releases sucks! I’d really like to se a stable version like 7.1.1 again and I hate it being an unpaid beta-tester in a so-called “release”. What I need is a stable version, I can work with and rely on if things come tough. I don’t need all those new features, where most of them are mainly good for marketing, but almost useless in production. I need reliability, stability and features that improve my daily work and help me getting faster, more precise, etc. ...

7.1 is my sentimental favorite. She was solid. Some really good and useful features have appeared since in the later versions but most of it is only half-done crap that acts more like bloatware. Most of my customers don't care if I know OOP or if I know how to make an Xcontrol. They want an app that is working and stable and will still be working and stable 5-10 years from now. And they want it in a reasonable amount of time without me spending their time/bucks finding another workaround for something that shouldn't need a workaround.

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