The effect of the changed licence policy after (more than ? ) a year, observe and tell..

[Neon_Light]

Hello to you all, 

I think its more than a year ago now that Ni changed there license policy, a lot of people, employees of company's and the company's who were using Labview software were astonished by the actions of Ni. Ni partly did change back some of their decisions after a while. I myself as others did invest a lot of time into Labview, lets be honest about it, a lot of company's are simply not willing to invest a lot of time in their employee's. So I did spend a lot of evenings playing around with Labview and other languages, it can be fun to nerd around with code. But the reward needs at least to be something some stability in your career or freedom of choice where to work. The company I work for now does not give stability. So, I did have a look around and did search for other company's who offer Labview jobs. My first impression is that, there are fewer job's available for Labview compared to a few year ago. It might be different in other countries, I live in the Netherlands myself. A while ago I had contact with Ni for the renewal of my license, they were helpful, however I am not sure if they did enough if I do a Labview-job-count. 

So whats you opinion and or observation, do you see a future for Labview? Do you think there will be more jobs in the future and is it wise to invest more time in Labview? Or is it better to invest time in other languages? If you answer please tell the country you live in. I use the RT packages they have a higher cost than the 'standard' Labview, so this might also influence things. 

thank you all!

 

 

 

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

I think there is a future and NI has significantly increased their activity and promotion for it (I guess one could be sarcastic and say that considering that NI's promotion of LabVIEW and active support of the community was pretty much zero just 3 years ago, anything more than zero is significant).

It will however not reach the stage that Dr. T once optimistically proposed as "LabVIEW everywhere". But that is not necessary. LabVIEW has still some interesting features and advantages and there won't be any programming environment ever that suits everybody.

The license change is welcome but not to significant, I think, as the new(old) perpetual license is basically quite beyond reasonable in my opinion. LabVIEW was expensive in the old days already but the new perpetual license cost is in my opinion simply to high (it's more than double of what it was before they tried to force feed the subscription). If I had to pay it myself, I would most likely stop with LabVIEW and simply use the Community Edition as a hobby.

However, you should anyhow never build your future on just one leg. LabVIEW can be an interesting and even viable option, but with LabVIEW alone you never could and never will be able to earn a keeping. You need additional expertise. LabVIEW shines in combination with hardware control, so having a good understanding on electronics, electricity, communication protocols, interoperability with other systems is what makes you stand apart in a world of other programmers. The actual world doesn't run on blockchain, LLMs, marketing and stock exchange, even if that seems what a large amount of people believe, since it promises quick profits. But the hype of today is the old story of tomorrow, since there is already another hype to chase then. Almost all the AI hypers on social media today, were trying to peddle their cr*pto hype a few years ago, and will all quickly move to the next hype once AI has been falling down from the hype (which it actually has done already more than once in the past, but most people seem to have a short memory or simply haven't been around long enough to remember).

Of course, I have about 10 more years I need to look forward too, so for me it is quite easy. There is enough of LabVIEW around to keep me full time busy with that until then, (but I like to also do some hardware and luckily can do that too). For someone younger, you definitely need to have some options open.

Edited 23 hours ago by Rolf Kalbermatter

[ShaunR]

I'll caveat this with this is only my opinion as a European. Market forces may be completely different to my perception in the US.

When I first started, LabVIEW was basically a loss-leader to sell hardware. The sales people would give it away free (or heavily discounted) if you bought the hardware. It proliferated and people like myself learnt and expanded our capabilities. Over time it launched a small consultancy industry specialising in LabVIEW. There were a few major successes such as JKI and some partnerships along with single developer consultants. The test and measurement industry had few rivals to LabVIEW's capabilities.

Fast forward to today and I think the emphasis is now firmly on large organisations with enormous hardware requirements-in particular governmental organisations. CERN is an obvious one in Europe (CERN being intergovernmental) but I believe there are many in the US. The Test and Measurement was, for the most part, lost to Python and although there are one or two consultants still operating in my neck of the woods, that part of the industry is basically gone here.

So. In my view there is still an appreciable number of opportunities working for large companies' in the US and Europe but if you are looking to be a self employed contractor (in Europe) then you would be better off with something else.

Edited 1 hour ago by ShaunR