LabVIEW NXG Feature Parity to LabVIEW "Classic"

[lvb]

Just checking in on the topic looming in the back of my mind every time NI Week occurs (although it is delayed this year).

When will LabVIEW NXG have feature parity to LabVIEW 20xx?  When will we be forced to move to NXG for new features?

 

As can be seen from the LabVIEW NXG Roadmap, it appears it is at least 3 releases away.

http://www.ni.com/pdf/products/us/labview-roadmap.pdf

Assuming an annual release cadence, that would mean 2023.

 

Is there any roadmap for the last release of LabVIEW classic (aka 20xx)?

[Aristos Queue]

I'm still working on LabVIEW 20xx full time, and I'm not alone. So it isn't this year. 🙂 But NXG releases full versions more than once per year.

Right now, we (NI) aren't publishing a timeline for end of development of LabVIEW 20xx. We have a date we'd like to see, but it'll depend upon NXG code velocity and customer adoption rates. There are already customers who only work in NXG. Each customer will have a different key feature where they say, "Ok, NXG is ready for me." Eventually, it'll be the vast majority of our users.

My hope is that we won't ever announce a planned end date. Instead, we will keep announcing how much more awesome NXG is than a few months ago. And, one day, you all will stop asking me for new features and I'll stop wanting to add them into LV 20xx because everything we need is over in NXG, and why would we stay in 20xx when that other platform has prettier graphics, and VIs that can't crosslink paths, and a reasonable componentization system, and Unicode support, and integrated hardware panels, much more impressive FPGA abilities, and Web integration, and... and that's all the stuff it already has today. NXG already is the platform I really want to be able to use for G. Someday, it'll be the platform I can use. On that day, you all won't care that I'm moving away from LV 20xx because you'll be already over there. And on that day, I'll make a choice: to either go join the NXG team (again -- I did develop on it for four years early on) or finally abandon text programming and become a full-time G programmer.

The only thing I'll say about the roadmap is this: that day is coming. You tell us when.

[drjdpowell]

Does NXG have shortcut menus on controls yet?  Can't really tell from Google because NXG seems to follow a "let's rename everything" obscuration strategy.  I see it seems to have subpanels now (renamed "panel containers" to prevent new users googling the past expert knowledge on how to best leverage subpanels).

And are those menus modern ones with, say, icons and tip strips?  That was something I was looking forward to with NXG: modern menus.

[smithd]

yeah i mean i still can't get nxg to open on my machine without crashing, so I think we have a ways to go before it reaches the current 2019 standard of crashing only randomly in the middle of your work

(real answer for me is that I use real-time, so 'next release' it might provide what I need but we shall see)

Edited April 12, 2020 by smithd

[Jordan Kuehn]

19 hours ago, smithd said:

(real answer for me is that I use real-time, so 'next release' it might provide what I need but we shall see)

Same here.

[Neil Pate]

I am actually braving NXG for a portion of a production system. The WebVI technology does make it quite easy to do simple web stuff which is all I need for a data dashboard.

Also I am happy to say that NXG 4.0 takes less than a minute to open from cold on my laptop and about 15 seconds on subsequent iterations! This is real progress 🙂

[paul_cardinale]

1. I like to use physical quantities when the values represent physical quantities (such as is common with device drivers).
2. When the code to run a control starts getting complicated, and the owning VI is already complicated, I like to encapsulate the code that runs the control into an XControl.
Am I doomed?

[MarkCG]

7 minutes ago, paul_cardinale said:

1. I like to use physical quantities when the values represent physical quantities (such as is common with device drivers).
2. When the code to run a control starts getting complicated, and the owning VI is already complicated, I like to encapsulate the code that runs the control into an XControl.
Am I doomed?

Is there anything like Xcontrols in NXG? I didn't think there was

[paul_cardinale]

1 hour ago, MarkCG said:

Is there anything like Xcontrols in NXG? I didn't think there was

That's my point.  No XControls, no physical quantities.  If LV 20xxis abandoned I'm doomed!

[Stagg54]

One Word: Scripting

Until we have scripting how do they expect anyone to be productive. It's like going back to the dark ages.

[Antoine Chalons]

I very much agree with the need for scripting.

It seems some folks at NI think that it's enough if we can use c# to script... almost funny...

[crossrulz]

24 minutes ago, Antoine Chalons said:

I very much agree with the need for scripting.

It seems some folks at NI think that it's enough if we can use c# to script... almost funny...

It is C# for now.  There are talks for making G interfaces for scripting.  It is just not a priority last I heard.  Admittedly, it has been probably a year since I heard that discussion.

[Aristos Queue]

>  Admittedly, it has been probably a year since I heard that discussion.

About a year... yeah. 🙂NXG's G scripting priority was... shall we say... re-evaluated after the European CLA Summit in 2019. It was kicked up a few notches after some very pointed comments from the user community, confirmed by Americas CLAs later that year. I'm not on that team and haven't kept tabs, but there should be some scripting support soon if it isn't already there. 

[smithd]

But just think about how fast you can get to your first measurement!!

[MikaelH]

And when can we add G code extension to NXG's IDE?
I'll move over when I get GDS running there 😉

[pawhan11]

Do You know if NXG is intended for windows platform only? Will it support using libraries written in .net core?

[Phillip Brooks]

20 hours ago, paul_cardinale said:

That's my point.  No XControls, no physical quantities.  If LV 20xxis abandoned I'm doomed!

If you search the Idea Exchange for XControls, they have all been declined.

 

[Neil Pate]

As much as I hate to say this, I don't really think we are NIs target audience with NXG. I would guestimate that there are probably fewer than a couple of hundred people in the world (apart from NI employees) who actually use LabVIEW scripting regularly.