If you could ask anyone at National Instruments any question. What

[Michael Aivaliotis]

If you could ask anyone at National Instruments any question. Who would you ask and what would the question be?

(Except this question: What is the password for the locked diagram of VI xyz.)

[Tomi Maila]

I would ask them the following question.

Why has National Instruments been so aggressive in blocking other vendors from providing visual programming languages? Wouldn't it help National Instruments to gain LabVIEW market share in its own niche market if visual programming would be more popular in general among engineers.

[Guillaume Lessard]

QUOTE(Tomi Maila @ May 29 2007, 11:13 AM)

Why has National Instruments been so aggressive in blocking other vendors from providing visual programming languages? Wouldn't it help National Instruments to gain LabVIEW market share in its own niche market if visual programming would be more popular in general among engineers.

I fear this is mostly a rhetorical question; I doubt the answer would be interesting.

Likely along the lines of "Because we could" or, at worst, "because of paranoia."

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

QUOTE(Guillaume Lessard @ May 29 2007, 03:31 PM)

I fear this is mostly a rhetorical question; I doubt the answer would be interesting.

Likely along the lines of "Because we could" or, at worst, "because of paranoia."

I believe they are legally obligated to defend their IP or risk loosing it.

Xerox was vey aggresive in prohitibit the word "Xerox" to refer to a xerographic image.

Ben

[Eugen Graf]

I would ask them to announce all plans for the future (like in LV7.0 we implement event driven programming, in LV 8.2 GOOP and so on).

Eugen

[Mike Ashe]

QUOTE(Guillaume Lessard @ May 29 2007, 03:31 PM)

I fear this is mostly a rhetorical question; I doubt the answer would be interesting.

Likely along the lines of "Because we could" or, at worst, "because of paranoia."

Actually, no.

I am not an NI employee, but I have asked Tomi's question several times, of NI employees, at several different levels in the corporate food chain. You get a lot of different answers depending on whom you ask and who is listening, but I have never had the slightest indication of paranoia or meanness (which is what "because we could" implies).

Profit is a lot of the reason. NI is a for profit company and makes no apologies, nor should they. Most programming languages were invented either by a tax funded lab or in an academic environment. In research, people in universites, etc, share, which is great. But that is not how LabVIEW was born. NI invented and patented the original technology and a lot of graphical languages have been close enough to NI's patents to convince a court that they had infringed, or convince the other company that they could not win a suit, or stay afloat financially while fighting it out in court. Note that NI has gone after a bunch of different people, but to the best of my knowledge (I could easily be out of date on this) they have also been for profit companies. Lots of big corporations (and small ones!) aggressively protect their patents and profits, not just NI.

Besides, the basic patents on the G language ran out back in February of this year if I recall right. If you or others are that annoyed, you are probably free to invest the time and effort to come up with your own graphical language now, and by all means, give it away for free as a public service. There's probably lots of people who would be happy to beta test it for you right here on LAVA ...

I'm breathing normally :laugh:

[Chris Davis]

What about the meaning of life? Or at least the meaning of alfa...

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Like Eugen, I would ask for roadmaps in order to have more long term visibility, to know more about forth-coming products (both hard and soft).

I asked a couple of times to a couple of NI people I know when LV, DAQmx, IMAQ, etc would be not 64bit compatible (which they already are) but 64bit "natural". From the answers I received (or did not receive shall I say) I deduced that they will make the effort when the think the market is big enough.

Unfortunately for those who need it now they are big enough to take time to do it (a bit like Microsoft).

This is what I personnaly assume, I may be totally wrong.

[Tomi Maila]

QUOTE(Mike Ashe @ May 30 2007, 01:21 AM)

Profit is a lot of the reason. NI is a for profit company and makes no apologies, nor should they.

Actually you misunderstood my question. My intention was to ask why does NI not see other visual programming languages an opportunity to gain more interest towards LabVIEW and indirectly towards NI hardware. Often all players on the market benefit from increased interest towards specific technology. I beleave NI would benefit economically from increased interest towards visual programming even if it meant loosening the current intellectual property policy.

[PaulG.]

QUOTE(Michael_Aivaliotis @ May 29 2007, 11:55 AM)

If you could ask anyone at National Instruments any question. Who would you ask and what would the question be?

(Except this question: What is the password for the locked diagram of VI xyz.)

What version control software seems to work the best with LV? Does NI have any plans to develop their own? Does the industry seem to have a favorite?

[Chris Davis]

QUOTE(PaulG. @ May 30 2007, 10:42 AM)

What version control software seems to work the best with LV? Does NI have any plans to develop their own? Does the industry seem to have a favorite?

I believe they use Perforce, NI did have their own source code control software, and dropped it after LabVIEW 7.1. I don't know if the industry has a favorite, but I do. SubVersion.

[gmart]

QUOTE(PaulG. @ May 30 2007, 10:42 AM)

What version control software seems to work the best with LV? Does NI have any plans to develop their own? Does the industry seem to have a favorite?

The question is a bit loaded. The LabVIEW development team uses Perforce internally. LabVIEW also has a VI-based cross-platform Perforce implementation. So Perforce has had extra testing.

As far as it working "the best", you might say that, but others might disagree.

From what I've seen, ClearCase and MS SourceSafe are used more in the industry than Perforce (Both work with LabVIEW). If you ask LAVA users, the favorite SCC system is SubVersion (specifically Tortoise SVN). You can use SubVersion with LabVIEW via a plug-in developed by PushOk.

LabVIEW used to have a built-in SCC system, but that was dropped when 8.0 was introduced since it made better sense to support external providers.

[TG]

QUOTE(Michael_Aivaliotis @ May 29 2007, 03:55 PM)

If you could ask anyone at National Instruments any question. Who would you ask and what would the question be?

(Except this question: What is the password for the locked diagram of VI xyz.)

I might have more than one Q for NI.

But I can think of this one right now.

Why is it so difficult to get really good (in depth) learning material about LabVIEW and why after all these years and versions (not to mention the cost of LV ownership) are there as of this day only several published books even worth reading about LabVIEW?

Im not talking about NI help or on line resources which are fine for when you are programming, Im talking about the "real" stuff;

The stuff that you can actually learn from. Old timers call it Book learning.

I've learned more from one decent about LV in 6 mo than in over 10 years of looking at all of NI's help files, web content, Discussion forums etc etc and that includes many courses given by NI which are (IMO) little more than exercise books.

NI s help is sufficient but lacks depth. There is no depth to any of NI's teaching, on line aids and such. why is this so and what could NI ultimately do about it?

[Ton Plomp]

Will we ever get support for Symbian?

[Tomi Maila]

QUOTE(tcplomp @ May 30 2007, 08:33 PM)

Will we ever get support for Symbian?

Who cares about 126 million shipped Symbian smart phones

[PaulG.]

QUOTE(gmart @ May 30 2007, 01:29 PM)

The question is a bit loaded ...

It's a very fair question. And you answered it quite well with: " ... The LabVIEW development team uses Perforce internally. LabVIEW also has a VI-based cross-platform Perforce implementation. So Perforce has had extra testing.

Anything used by NI LV develoment team and tested internally by NI HAS to be better than what I'm using now. :headbang: I won't mention it by name since it may result in being banned from LAVA.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

QUOTE(Michael_Aivaliotis @ May 29 2007, 11:55 AM)

If you could ask anyone at National Instruments any question. Who would you ask and what would the question be?

(Except this question: What is the password for the locked diagram of VI xyz.)

I would ask Jeff K (because I beileve he has his hands into this),

the Q

"Could you please pass me a copy of and include me in the distribution of changes to the specifactions for the "in-placeness" algorithm?"

Ben

[Michael Aivaliotis]

QUOTE(John Rouse @ May 30 2007, 10:32 AM)

Why is it so difficult to get really good (in depth) learning material about LabVIEW and why after all these years and versions (not to mention the cost of LV ownership) are there as of this day only several published books even worth reading about LabVIEW?

Im not talking about NI help or on line resources which are fine for when you are programming, Im talking about the "real" stuff;

The stuff that you can actually learn from. Old timers call it Book learning.

I've learned more from one decent about LV in 6 mo than in over 10 years of looking at all of NI's help files, web content, Discussion forums etc etc and that includes many courses given by NI which are (IMO) little more than exercise books.

NI s help is sufficient but lacks depth. There is no depth to any of NI's teaching, on line aids and such. why is this so and what could NI ultimately do about it?

Don't want to stray the conversation off-topic (great questions everyone , btw). I don't think there's money in LabVIEW book writing. Based on this blog, why would anyone spend the time to publish (besides fame of course)? I think all the old timers with knowledge to share should put efforts in resources like the LabVIEW Wiki where we can combine our resources instead of isolating ourselves. Why should NI be responsible for good books when there are a lot of us out here with knowledge to share. One of the reasons I started the Wiki was so I can have a platform to write my own in-depth articles. Like anything however, it takes time.

[Mike Ashe]

QUOTE(Tomi Maila @ May 30 2007, 04:19 AM)

Actually you misunderstood my question. My intention was to ask why does NI not see other visual programming languages an opportunity to gain more interest towards LabVIEW and indirectly towards NI hardware. Often all players on the market benefit from increased interest towards specific technology. I beleave NI would benefit economically from increased interest towards visual programming even if it meant loosening the current intellectual property policy.

Hi Tomi,

Lets both keep smiling here , but I did understand your question. Perhaps I stated my response without explaining the underlying assumptions. You assume that having other graphic languages will raise interest in general and therefore raise LabVIEW. I simply state that from my observations it seems that NI does not share that assumption. If they did they would move in their own self interest and encourage those languages. Instead, they seem to view other languages as mainly competition, and that the best way to gain more interest in LabVIEW is to make more LabVIEW, not encourage "other" graphical languages. Note that they have come up with the new LEGO Mindstorms to get the kids into graphical programming. There is the push into new hardware markets, specifically the embedded markets with the LabVIEW Embedded and FPGA tools. All of these are based on LabVIEW, not on encouraging others to come up with graphical languages and then cheering them on. Until the market forces them to do otherwise, the most effective way for most companies to increase their share of the market is to push those areas where they have an IP/competative advantage.

Currently NI is the 400 kg gorilla in the graphical language department. They are on top in sales and market share. If other graphical languages were encouraged and gained popularity then it might also gain the attention of 40,000 kg gargantua like Microsoft. NI already has their niche.

That all being said, I would love to see them help other graphical languages get going. Now that the basic G language patents are up, they could use that as a good PR excuse to do what you are asking. But I'm not holding my breath.

Hmm, let me try to agree with you, by asking my question of NI in a rephrase of yours:

1st Question NI: now that the patents are up, are you already, or would you be willing, to work with others on a standardized version of ANSI G, like ANSI C/C++ ? Say, something with the functionality of LabVIEW 5?

2nd Question NI: When are you going to generalize LabVIEW such that you can rewrite LabVIEW, in G, and dispense with text languages altogether?

(I recently asked that one of Brian Powell, NI Principal LabVIEW Architect)

Cheers

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

QUOTE(Mike Ashe @ May 31 2007, 03:11 PM)

2nd Question NI: When are you going to generalize LabVIEW such that you can rewrite LabVIEW, in G, and dispense with text languages altogether?

(I recently asked that one of Brian Powell, NI Principal LabVIEW Architect)

Well come on... What answer did you get ???

[Mike Ashe]

QUOTE(TiT @ May 31 2007, 09:27 AM)

Well come on... What answer did you get ???

A quiet and honest one, that pointed me in other truthfull directions, and effectively sidestepped my question. Sometimes you learn more about how something is answered than by the answer itself.

I first asked this question at dinner one night during NIWeek 1996. The answer I got then (from Greg McKaskle) was that it is and would be impossible.

I will state flatly that we could create a functional equivalent to LabVIEW 1 using LabVIEW 5 tools. I think we could create most of LabVIEW in G now, especially with NI's help. Certainly there is little or nothing about the front panel and diagram editing environments that we could not write using picture controls and spawned instances from templates now. I'm not saying it would be easy, heck, LabVIEW has several hundred person-years of development in it by now.

I've re-asked the question several times over the last 10 years. Usually I get blank stares, sometimes intrigued stares, seldom a direct answer. Brian pointed me towards that fact that LabVIEW is used to make the LEGO mindstorms code. He pointed towards the LabVIEW Embedded version, that translates G into C code for the compiling tool pipeline of whatever processor you are targeting. He pointed out that more and more of the LabVIEW editing environment is written in G, such as the properties and startup pages, etc. But he didn't address rewriting the G compiler in G, the way you can write a C compiler in C, until I directly phrased it that way. He then paused, grinned a bit and allowed that he supposed it was possible, but wouldn't go further than that.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

QUOTE(Mike Ashe @ May 31 2007, 10:00 AM)

A quiet and honest one, that pointed me in other truthfull directions, and effectively sidestepped my question. Sometimes you learn more about how something is answered than by the answer itself.

I first asked this question at dinner one night during NIWeek 1996. The answer I got then (from Greg McKaskle) was that it is and would be impossible.

I will state flatly that we could create a functional equivalent to LabVIEW 1 using LabVIEW 5 tools. I think we could create most of LabVIEW in G now, especially with NI's help. Certainly there is little or nothing about the front panel and diagram editing environments that we could not write using picture controls and spawned instances from templates now. I'm not saying it would be easy, heck, LabVIEW has several hundred person-years of development in it by now.

I've re-asked the question several times over the last 10 years. Usually I get blank stares, sometimes intrigued stares, seldom a direct answer. Brian pointed me towards that fact that LabVIEW is used to make the LEGO mindstorms code. He pointed towards the LabVIEW Embedded version, that translates G into C code for the compiling tool pipeline of whatever processor you are targeting. He pointed out that more and more of the LabVIEW editing environment is written in G, such as the properties and startup pages, etc. But he didn't address rewriting the G compiler in G, the way you can write a C compiler in C, until I directly phrased it that way. He then paused, grinned a bit and allowed that he supposed it was possible, but wouldn't go further than that.

I am convinced the conversion of developing LV in LV is already happening and may play a large role in the performance hits we have seen with LV 8 plus.

Look at the charts. graphs tables and thier recent bugs. They are now implemented as X-controls using the picture control to present the graphics.

It is happening now!

Ben

[Mike Ashe]

QUOTE(Ben @ May 31 2007, 10:06 AM)

I am convinced ... It is happening now!

We haven't had a good conspiracy theory for a while now

Hmm, at the risk of seeming greedy, I'd like to throw out a third question, or request:

At NIWeek there has been the practice of "Talk with a LabVIEW Developer", where you could sign up and ask your question directly of someone on the development team.

I'd like to see an "NI SkunkWorks Fair" at NIWeek. One session period where NI has tables set up and all of the LabVIEW developers are sitting there with thier favorite pet internal project that has not seen the light of day yet. We sort of get this when Jeff K. and others give us glimpses of things they are working on/toying around with for 2-3 versions down the road. But I mean all the developers, all the "black budget" projects.

I was told that NI had undo internally long before it was released. Obviously there is scripting. I was told that LabVIEW for linux started out as a pet project, etc. I'm not saying it would be in NI's IP interests to have this, but I know people would be standing room only, and probably in a waiting line out the hall.

[eaolson]

My question would be: What is LabVIEW like "under the hood"? It seems that many of the high-level VIs are done by eating their own dogfood and are written in LabVIEW, but others are unexplorable primitives. The number of external DLLs and CINs seems to be decreasing (I could be wrong about this). Aristos Queue once said that the Get Queue Status VI "generates no code" if a particular wire was left unconnected. Ever since then I've wondered if much of LabVIEW is a front-end for connecting bits of pre-compliled code.

[Aristos Queue]

Zen Koans teach that certain yes/no questions can only be answered with "mu". The classic example:

Question: "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

Answer: "Mu."

"Mu" unasks a question that is based on false assumptions. The above question not only presumes that you have a wife, but also that at some point you started beating her. If you don't have a wife or never started beating her, then both yes and no would both be misleading answers.

QUOTE(Ben @ May 30 2007, 02:43 PM)

"Could you please pass me a copy of and include me in the distribution of changes to the specifactions for the "in-placeness" algorithm?"

The answer to your question is "mu." Can you puzzle out the incorrect assumptions built into the question?