I am taking a sabbatical from LabVIEW and NI R&D

[hooovahh]

11 hours ago, Aristos Queue said:

LV's user base continues to grow. Not as fast as it has at some years in the past, but it still grows at a reasonable clip. 

Sorry I have to play devil's advocate.  But is it growing slower than other programming languages?

[ensegre]

12 hours ago, Aristos Queue said:

LV's user base continues to grow. Not as fast as it has at some years in the past, but it still grows at a reasonable clip. 

anecdotal evidence?

[Antoine Chalons]

13 hours ago, Aristos Queue said:

LV's user base continues to grow.

Is NI sharing public information to support this statement?
LAVA might not be a good indicator of LV's user base mood, but I find it hard to be confident/positive about LabVIEW's future - and I'm trying hard because I do love LabVIEW.
 

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

17 hours ago, Aristos Queue said:

LV's user base continues to grow. Not as fast as it has at some years in the past, but it still grows at a reasonable clip. 

Without a more qualified statement about how you get to this conclusion such as what numbers are used, there is no way I can believe this. If you look at other indicators such as participation in the various forums, NI, LavaG and LabVIEWForum.de all I can say is that those numbers look VERYYYYYY much lower than a few years back.

So either all those new users that are added year over year are real cracks who do not need any support of any kind, or NI has a secret support channel they can tap into, that us mere mortals do not have, or something is totally off.

The public visible exposure of LabVIEW, just as NI itself, definitely has been diminishing in the last 5 years tremendously. Maybe all those new users are inherent user licenses included with the semiconductor test setups that are sold. Buying LabVIEW on the website is an almost impossible exercise recently and getting informed quotes also. 

 

Edited February 15, 2022 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[ShaunR]

4 hours ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

Without a more qualified statement about how you get to this conclusion such as what numbers are used, there is no way I can believe this. If you look at other indicators such as participation in the various forums, NI, LavaG and LabVIEWForum.de all I can say is that those numbers look VERYYYYYY much lower than a few years back.

So either all those new users that are added year over year are real cracks who do not need any support of any kind, or NI has a secret support channel they can tap into, that us mere mortals do not have, or something is totally off.

The public visible exposure of LabVIEW, just as NI itself, definitely has been diminishing in the last 5 years tremendously. Maybe all those new users are inherent user licenses included with the semiconductor test setups that are sold. Buying LabVIEW on the website is an almost impossible exercise recently and getting informed quotes also. 

 

I have to agree. The proxy indicator of Job positions also shows a rapid decline in Europe. Not sure if that is replicated in the US but I suspect it is.

[Gribo]

Anecdotal evidence, I know, but here  (Toronto, Canada) The number of open LabVIEW developer positions is practically 0.

[Mads]

1 hour ago, Gribo said:

Anecdotal evidence, I know, but here  (Toronto, Canada) The number of open LabVIEW developer positions is practically 0.

Toronto is halfway around the globe from me so I will not pretend to know anything about the job market there, but just out of curiosity I found 28 adverts here that at least mentions LabVIEW.

The number of open positions that mentions LabVIEW here in Norway actually seems slightly higher than it used to be (contrary to the feeling I also have about its decline). There are very few pure developer positions though, as has always been the case.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Mads

[Aristos Queue]

I skirted the edge of what I'm allowed to say in my last statement. I'm obviously not at liberty to share any numbers, nor can I speak officially for NI on that front, but I personally had no qualms about returning to the LV team based on the data I've seen, at least for now. The future is not as bright as I'd like, but it's good enough for me to keep working.

The decline on LAVA is worrisome. I've also noticed the reduction. It might be indicative that all of our new user growth is in experienced groups buying more seats for legacy systems without onboarding more new hires. I worry about that. But there's several other factors that could explain it also:  The annual refresh of users from NIWeek/NIConnect has not happened for two years. The forums on ni.com are significantly improved (not as nice as LAVA in my opinion, but good enough to not drive people away like they used to). User groups went virtual during pandemic, which means there are now many more places to go for expert input regardless of geography. The number of other support venues has blossomed -- Stack Overflow is now available to LV in a way that it wasn't just a couple years ago; internal support groups exist at far more large companies than in the past. And the LV population has diversified into non-English countries. 

So am I worried about the future? Yes. But do I think we are currently in a bad spot? No. 

[X___]

NI is publicly traded and is of course entitled to promote any "forward looking" image of itself as suits its needs.

Fundamentally though, there is a difference between the hardware sale expanding and, because it is associated with a LabVIEW sale, a concomitant increase of the "user base", and a language adoption increase.

The type of reaction of text programmers to LabVIEW is predictable and hasn't changed in decades. They will revert to text-based development once they realize that drivers exists for their preferred language.

The feeling that is expressed here, from long time LabVIEW developers, is that LabVIEW is stale and, after the NXG debacle, dead. There is absolutely no benefit for a new comer to invest the time and effort to become proficient in a development environment that is stuck in 20...10?

[Ansible]

On 2/16/2022 at 9:53 AM, X___ said:

The feeling that is expressed here, from long time LabVIEW developers, is that LabVIEW is stale and, after the NXG debacle, dead. There is absolutely no benefit for a new comer to invest the time and effort to become proficient in a development environment that is stuck in 20...10?

Love the language but it is hard to disagree with this, I am a synesthetic and dyslexic human who finds it much easier to deal with and faster to program in(except for the amount that it crashes and the multi-hour build times)

I have 10-15 years left in my career (hopefully, no climate change depression 🤞) and I fully expect to spend the last 5-10 doing legacy support and converting old LabVIEW apps to something else.  I am starting to learn skills that will facilitate this.

Closed source will never compete with open souce. Just look at how dotnet has expanded since Microsoft open sourced it and moved it to cross platform. 

[X___]

quoted from this video (not my input):

[Stagg54]

On 3/2/2022 at 7:40 PM, X___ said:

quoted from this video (not my input):

Well NI just solved the distribution and licensing problem didn't they? No one's complaining about that any more.

[X___]

1 hour ago, Stagg54 said:

Well NI just solved the distribution and licensing problem didn't they? No one's complaining about that any more.

Just to make it clear to those who did not watch the video (or attend the meeting): these were LIVE inputs from the audience, which were fed directly into the presenter's screen.

But, yes, I don't think the "distribution and licensing" comment was addressed by NI's new licensing policy. But again, he just laughed all these comments off and went on to the next question.

[A Scottish moose]

18 minutes ago, X___ said:

Just to make it clear to those who did not watch the video (or attend the meeting): these were LIVE inputs from the audience, which were fed directly into the presenter's screen.

But, yes, I don't think the "distribution and licensing" comment was addressed by NI's new licensing policy. But again, he just laughed all these comments off and went on to the next question.

Harsh but true. 

 

To his credit it takes a brave presenter to take live comments, especially when they are posted directly behind you. 

[X___]

2 hours ago, A Scottish moose said:

To his credit it takes a brave presenter to take live comments, especially when they are posted directly behind you. 

Right... Feels like the 100 flowers campaign to me. They will learn their lesson quickly.

[Michael Aivaliotis]

On 2/15/2022 at 12:48 PM, Gribo said:

Anecdotal evidence, I know, but here  (Toronto, Canada) The number of open LabVIEW developer positions is practically 0.

I worked in Toronto for many years in the past and can tell you that this is nothing new. The "market" for LabVIEW in that area is not very strong. I don't know why, but it's always been like that. There are definitely LabVIEW "Hubs", where there are more opportunities. It also highly depends on if there is a concentration of companies that use LabVIEW in one area. For example, the SF Bay Area where I am now has many job opportunities. LabVIEW users\developers knowledgeable with the language jump from company to company spreading the word. What makes LabVIEW grow is the same as it was from inception. Someone falls in love with the language and becomes an evangelist that then carries the torch and spreads the word. NIWeek was definitely the "church", where we brought others to hear the "good word". Whether we like it or not, my friends, this is a religion...

[A Scottish moose]

21 hours ago, X___ said:

Right... Feels like the 100 flowers campaign to me. They will learn their lesson quickly.

I hope this is true.  LabVIEW is the only language I enjoy programming in.  I had thought community edition was the solution to this problem but I've basically seen LV interest continually wane in the 10 years I've been using it.

 

[Reds]

I’m not so quick to use participation numbers on this website as a proxy for LabVIEW popularity generally. I would be real curious to know what percentage of active participants on this site only found out about it via the the old info-LabVIEW listserv. 
 

How would a brand new LabVIEW developer find or know about this site? Google? What are the odds that this site ranks better than ni.com in Google? Pretty much zero I would think.

[Antoine Chalons]

52 minutes ago, Reds said:

 I would be real curious to know what percentage of active participants on this site only found out about it via the the old info-LabVIEW listserv.

I'm one of those.

Quote

How would a brand new LabVIEW developer find or know about this site? Google? What are the odds that this site ranks better than ni.com in Google? Pretty much zero I would think.

I'm not sure how young lads do their internet search but if you look-up "labview forum" LAVA is in the top 3

[Aristos Queue]

4 hours ago, Antoine Chalons said:

but if you look-up "labview forum" LAVA is in the top 3

But if I just search "LabVIEW" on Google, lavag.org isn't in the first five pages of results when I'm logged into Google, so it knows my interests. My results are similar (but not identical) when I use a non-Chrome browser with private browsing on a new virtual machine (I didn't take time to hide my IP address). 

That seems like some search engine tuning is in order. 

[Antoine Chalons]

That doesn't shock me at all.

The activity on LAVA is - and has been for quite some time - very low.

 

Edit : ... in quantity of course

Edited April 13, 2022 by Antoine Chalons

[Bryan]

Just a thought, but I think that many younger/new developers aren't necessarily searching for online forums anymore. 

My guess is that newer generations of programmers may view online forums as "social media for old timers'".  If they have questions, they may look on platforms such as Reddit, et. al.  If they want to contribute, they may create videos on YouTube or other platforms where the rewards for contributing could be financial, notoriety or "influencer"-like status with a larger potential audience.  This may be more appealing for newbies than reputation badges on a small, concentrated community.  

I'm not implying that the motives are all so superficial for all "young pups" entering or participating in the world of LabVIEW.  However, there are more "shiny" alternatives to a single online forum from which assistance can be gained and contributions made.

I guess, being an "old timer" myself, I still prefer the concentrated and focused community of smaller online forums, where one's questions and contributions don't get lost in the noise associated with larger platforms.  This is why I almost exclusively stick to LAVA and rarely visit the dark side for any information.

[hooovahh]

I think LAVA gets a decent amount of exposure at NI Week.  It is usually one of the most popular events, aside from the main party put on by NI.  But new developers aren't likely flocking to NI Week, especially recently.  LabVIEW activity on reddit is quite low, less quantity, but I'd also argue less quality than LAVA.  I chime in there occasionally, but without the subforums, it is hard to categorize what you are talking about.  Jokes and memes along side NI announcements, people looking for homework help, and technical discussions all jumbled together feels weird to me.  Other subreddits have enough activity that the popular stuff is pushed up by voting and the algorithm. 

[ShaunR]

Antoine's new profile pic is enough to scare anyone off of the forums-including search engines. He's really let himself go.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

10 hours ago, Reds said:

I’m not so quick to use participation numbers on this website as a proxy for LabVIEW popularity generally. I would be real curious to know what percentage of active participants on this site only found out about it via the the old info-LabVIEW listserv. 
 

How would a brand new LabVIEW developer find or know about this site? Google? What are the odds that this site ranks better than ni.com in Google? Pretty much zero I would think.

It's not just LAVA. All of the LabVIEW related forums are very low traffic compared to lets say 5 to 10 years ago. Sure it is more spread around nowaday, with NI forum, LAVA, German LabVIEW forum, Info-LabVIEW,  Reddit, Stackoverflow and YouTobe all having some LabVIEW participation.

The German forum is since 2 or 3 years practically dead, with maybe one or two posts per month, Info-LabVIEW has only a few diehards who still post questions there with maybe one question a month, LAVA is fairly active but much less than several years ago and on the NI forum, participation is also definitely lower and in other forums than for LabVIEW practically 0. Even in the LabVIEW forum there is considerably less traffic and participation of Blue Eagles is VERY thin.

Leaves Reddit, Stackoverflow and YouTube, which I almost never follow. But from what I have seen there, the quality is often very limited both for questions and the answers that are given. YouTube videos are sometimes quite helpful, but often just a rehash of some tutorial that are available elsewhere or even outright wrong.

So I would say it definitely has slowed down and while you could argue that everything has already been asked before somewhere and therefore there are very little new questions that can be posted, I don't quite buy that as only possible reason. And the fact that NI support very seldom participates even in their own forum is quite a telling thing too.