How to mainstream LabVIEW?

[Justin Goeres]

QUOTE(TG @ Oct 17 2007, 07:36 PM)

I wrote this long winded thesis on why I am unhappy with NI's QC today then I realized things are

best left unsaid.

QUOTE(crelf @ Oct 18 2007, 04:50 AM)

IMHO, you should post your thoughts and ideas, rather than just posting that you have them.

"This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors. This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors.This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors.This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors.This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors.This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors.This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors.This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors.This post is not executable. The full development version of LAVA is required to fix the errors...."

I dunno, that's just what came to my mind . I also agree, though. Dish the dirt!

[Gary Rubin]

QUOTE(eaolson @ Oct 18 2007, 12:35 AM)

I can't agree more. I imagine one of the big fish in the programming game is Visual Studio, which pretty much maxes out with the Professional version for $670, a factor of 2 cheaper than LabVIEW's starting version. The Standard version is $250. Some LabVIEW versions are an order of magnitude more expensive than that.

I think you may be comparing apples and oranges a bit here.

I don't have much experience with those other languages, but I would consider LabVIEW to be a higher-level language than C, etc.

If you look at the function palette, I see the stuff in the red box as pretty much your "basic" programming capability. The other stuff, especially the Analyze section, is what you're getting for your extra $k.

http://lavag.org/old_files/monthly_10_2007/post-4344-1192713314.gif' target="_blank">

A better comparison might be to other high-level technical languages, such as Matlab or IDL. With those languages, as with LabVIEW, you are paying for more than just a compiler and a basic command set; you are also paying for 1) a considerable library of specialized functions that you don't have to write yourself, and 2) the fact that you don't have to define all your variables and can add a float to an integer and get the right answer.

Now, maybe 1) is the point of the request for LabVIEW light? If someone doesn't need to do all that mathematical stuff, it would be nice to choose to not pay for that part.

Incidentally, I was in a Matlab training class yesterday. One of the introduction slides claimed that Matlab is used by more than 1E6 users in over 130 countries.

I don't know LabVIEW's numbers, but I would suspect that they are smaller. As a comparison point, a single-user Matlab license is $1900. I think the difference is that Matlab is in schools.

Sorry for this meandering message. I use LabVIEW as a general purpose language for performing "technical computing", and I guess that's where the identity crisis comes in: When we're talking about making LV more mainstream, are we talking about more mainstream within the programming world, or more mainstream within the technical computing world?

Gary

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

QUOTE(Gary Rubin @ Oct 18 2007, 09:33 AM)

...

Incidentally, I was in a Matlab training class yesterday. One of the introduction slides claimed that Matlab is used by more than 1E6 users in over 130 countries.

I don't know LabVIEW's numbers, but I would suspect that they are smaller....Gary

The newset member on the NI forum has "user.id=95299". So if we say that only one in ten register on their forum then the user community would be about the same.

My freshest rookie has an NI contact ID# just short of 5M.

So LV's user base MAY be over 1M.

Ben

[Gary Rubin]

QUOTE(neB @ Oct 18 2007, 10:14 AM)

My freshest rookie has an NI contact ID# just short of 5M.

Ben,

Just about every part of that statement is over my head. What does that refer to?

(yeah, yeah, split infinitive - my wife is the English major, not me...)

Gary

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

QUOTE(Gary Rubin @ Oct 18 2007, 10:18 AM)

Ben,

Just about every part of that statement is over my head. What does that refer to?

(yeah, yeah, split infinitive - my wife is the English major, not me...)

Gary

I'm not sure what a split infinitive is.

When you call NI and ask for help, they need to know your name to figure who you are and if you get support etc. Once the operator finds you they can transfer you to support or whatever. If you ask them what your contact ID# is and record it, the next tim eyou call you can just give them your ID# and there is no question about who you are. Old-timers will have an ID# that ends in the letter "L" for legacy.

Newer users get the next number available.

The newest member of my team has an ID# of the form 49XXXXX which is just short of 5,000,000.

Sorry about the confusion.

Ben

[Gary Rubin]

QUOTE(neB @ Oct 18 2007, 10:29 AM)

I'm not sure what a split infinitive is.

I should have said "To what does this refer", not "What does this refer to".

QUOTE(neB @ Oct 18 2007, 10:29 AM)

When you call NI and ask for help, they need to know your name to figure who you are and if you get support etc. Once the operator finds you they can transfer you to support or whatever. If you ask them what your contact ID# is and record it, the next tim eyou call you can just give them your ID# and there is no question about who you are. Old-timers will have an ID# that ends in the letter "L" for legacy.

Ah, I see. So that means that 5M individual users have requested tech support since that system was started?

[Mache]

QUOTE(Val Brown @ Oct 16 2007, 05:56 PM)

Well there it is, isn't it? You think free is about the right price and I expect to pay what something's is worth. Hmmm, perhaps that's why I'm not using JAVA.....<OK, that's a joke>

The thing about "free" is it works. If you want to become mainstream, that is the fastest and sure way to do it. The issue is "If you want to become mainstream".

Here are few classic cases of how free has proven itself.

1. IE Vs Netscape (IE is the most used Browser today)

2. Firefox Vs IE ( Firefox has mad great inroads against IE)

3. Microchip Vs Motorola - Among other factors, Microchip makes their IDE available free and Compiler is also free albeit without any optimization. You pay $500 for that. But for students, startups and hobbyists, it is most welcome and 10 years later Microchip PIC is the processor most used in world today. Mototorla, TI have caught on make their IDE free with some limits on code size.

4. Cell Phones. The market realy exploded when the cell phone was free with an year long contract. Before it was languishing. In south-east Asia to lure customers, they have incoming calls free!!

5. Email - Same thing

6. Java - the free thing helped it.

I believe in few years you will see

Free Phone service - If you buy Data & Video, Voce is the minimal user of Bandwidth. It is in place with VOIP. But needs some maturity. IPTV will bring it more mainstream.

So For Labview. If a version is available, where you can run a samll program (Say 50 Subvi's of some Size), It would now start getting mainstream. People would download it and use it. If someone decides to make a product or use it in a system they will then have to buy it. The whole point of intorducing activation since 8.0 is that. Except dont cripple it after 30 days. Make sure they can use it in some limited way.

I would like to see LabView go mainstream and there is no better way to do it then indoctrinate the masses. As churchill said "Nothing Succeeds like Excess"

Mache

[crelf]

QUOTE(Mache @ Oct 19 2007, 12:38 AM)

4. Cell Phones. In south-east Asia to lure customers, they have incoming calls free!!

That's standard operations in a lot of countries. I was confused when I came to the US: "What do you mean I have to pay when someone calls me??!? They're calling me!!!"

[jzoller]

Competition.

That is all.

Joe Z.

[wevanarsdale]

QUOTE(Justin Goeres @ Oct 16 2007, 02:17 PM)

Another thing that LabVIEW needs, in the long run, to become more mainstream is better support in the schools... High schools and colleges all still teach text-based programming almost exclusively, and if NI/LabVIEW/the community can dent that hegemony over the next 10-15 years, it will go a long way toward teaching all these fertile young minds to think in dataflow.

QUOTE(Mads @ Oct 17 2007, 03:33 AM)

The "Lab" makes it sound like a quirky (nonprogrammer) engineering tool.

LabVIEW has been targeted at engineers since its inception. Most undergraduate engineering majors, excluding some electrical programs and computer science (if it's even part of the engineering college), are limited to one required course in computer science due to a credit hour "crunch" that pushes degree programs to 4.5 years. What single course would you have students take in computer science? I find it hard to argue against C, which is perhaps a step up from the Fortran course required into the 1990s. While most engineering students will not be competitive with computer science graduates who spent 4 years programming in text-based languages, they will at least understand the process. Teaching undergraduate engineers LabVIEW as their only introduction to computer science is a hard sell. Computer science professors rarely even know about LabVIEW. Consequently, professors in the engineering college would have to assume this role, which is daunting due to a lack of facilities and expertise. Engineering faculty tend to be older due to incentives associated with tenure. Anyone born before 1953 (55+ years old) did not have a scientific calculator during their time as an undergraduate student. Many of these faculty (typically influential full professors) do not program computers as part of their research and fail to see the importance of additional computer science classes in an already large curriculum. The others are largely self-taught, usually in the context of their own research. Most of these people did not venture into LabVIEW when it was introduced in the mid-1980s, possibly because text-based languages seemed to have a better chance at permanence. The obvious place to introduce LabVIEW to engineering undergraduates is in the context of lab courses. Most majors have 3+ courses devoted to this area, usually taught by experimentalists using computers in their own work. These faculty are more likely to be familiar with LabVIEW or at least have an interest in the subject. This context is currently the most compelling undergraduate environment for using LabVIEW, allowing engineering students outside of computer science to handle their own programming tasks using a high level language. Perhaps this state of affairs will change in the future, but you will have to wait at least a decade for a significant portion of the older faculty to retire or lose influence.

[Ton Plomp]

QUOTE(neB @ Oct 18 2007, 04:14 PM)

The newset member on the NI forum has "user.id=95299". So if we say that only one in ten register on their forum then the user community would be about the same.

My freshest rookie has an NI contact ID# just short of 5M.

So LV's user base MAY be over 1M.

Ben

I have at least three different contact ID#s at NI...

So were down to 1.6 Million

Ton

PS you are kidding about the fact you have to pay to receive a phone call?

[Yair]

QUOTE(neB @ Oct 18 2007, 04:29 PM)

Newer users get the next number available.

Do you know that for a fact?

I know of some systems which occasionally change the range they use to avoid having outside sources know how many people are registered in the system.

QUOTE(crelf @ Oct 18 2007, 05:10 PM)

"What do you mean I have to pay when someone calls me??!? They're calling

me

!!!"

Well, the US is well known for being behind the times when it comes to cellular service.

As for the topic of the thread, I wouldn't mind seeing graphical programming available to more people either.

[Gabi1]

QUOTE(Yen @ Oct 18 2007, 09:04 PM)

Well, the US is well known for being behind the times when it comes to cellular service.

only Cellular? i saw sicko the other day...scary man!

here is my theory

1) back versions should be free. how about set 6.1 (introduction of event structures) become totally free to all, supported by NI. (not hidden in a german magazine pls)

2) a run-time engine should come with the installation of Windows/Mac...it is stretched, but will make it so much easier.

3) lets stop call it LAbview. whats wrong with G/GOOP?

4) back and forward compatible versions: i should be able to open LV8.5 code in LV8.0 or 7.1. the object/classes/ nodes that dont exist would just break. how hard could it be?

5) teaching, as everybody already says.

[Val Brown]

QUOTE(Mache @ Oct 18 2007, 07:38 AM)

The thing about "free" is it works. If you want to become mainstream, that is the fastest and sure way to do it. The issue is "If you want to become mainstream".

Here are few classic cases of how free has proven itself.

1. IE Vs Netscape (IE is the most used Browser today)

2. Firefox Vs IE ( Firefox has mad great inroads against IE)

3. Microchip Vs Motorola - Among other factors, Microchip makes their IDE available free and Compiler is also free albeit without any optimization. You pay $500 for that. But for students, startups and hobbyists, it is most welcome and 10 years later Microchip PIC is the processor most used in world today. Mototorla, TI have caught on make their IDE free with some limits on code size.

4. Cell Phones. The market realy exploded when the cell phone was free with an year long contract. Before it was languishing. In south-east Asia to lure customers, they have incoming calls free!!

5. Email - Same thing

6. Java - the free thing helped it.

I believe in few years you will see...

Mache

Yes and no. IE was never "free" - it was bundled into the OS which had to be purchased. MS caught hell because they correctly saw that users just want an integrated experience, including internet, email, music management, etc. They don't want to HAVE TO make choices about funcamental services like internet access programs even though they also WANT to have choices available. A lot of time and resource was wasted by everyone to deal with that basic fight and, in the end, MS was right in essence. Firefox vs IE -- FWIW I use IE in Windows and Safari in Mac and I use them because they are the mainstream AND because I have companies to deal with if something goes wrong. Yes Microchip came along and introduced "free" in a market that already existed, otherwise they wouldn't have had ANY market penetration. Same with Java and it also probably wouldn't have gone anywhere EXCEPT that it was free. Email came free because of how the early internet evolved our of DARPA-net with its basic messaging. Again, a piggyback on established technology and "product" line.

One of the other poster mentioned the role of older faculty -- who are not familiar with LV -- being a major impediment and I agree. The sentiment that: "If they're only going to get one programming course, let it be C" really needs to be shifted to "If they're only going to get one programmig course, let it be LV". And that will only come about as more and more of those senior faculty have experience with LV and what it brings to the educational experience.

[Karl Rony]

QUOTE(eaolson @ Oct 16 2007, 01:36 PM)

I've seen a few people here and there talk about LabVIEW and how it could become a general purpose programming language. With some spare time on my hands, I was thinking about that the other day and started to wonder what LabVIEW would need to do to actually become such a language Similarly, but more importantly, what will it take for LabVIEW to be viewed by non-wireworkers as a "real" programming language?

I also think it would be great if LabVIEW moved out of its niche. I find it interesting that LabVIEW is used at one end of the spectrum for industrial and technical applications and at the other, very non-technical end, for Mindstorms NXT. But there's not much in the middle. I was actually thinking LabVIEW might make a good to teach beginning programming; it's fairly intuitive, comprehensive GUI widgets are built right in, and the danger of obscure compiler errors is minimal to none.

1. Cost. I hate to be gauche, but this is an important issue. I'm looking for a job now and I've come to realize that, if my job doesn't require me to use LabVIEW, I probably will have to give it up. We have a site license, and I'll lose access to that when I leave. I might pick up the Student Edition or something, but $5000 for a programming language? I'll switch back to VC++ or Java for stuff I fiddle with at home.

2. By reference objects

There is just a lot you can do with obkect references that you just can't do with a by-value object. I know it's not exactly fair to be making this complaint when LabVIEW just got by-value objects not long ago. I just think it would go a long way toward LabVIEW being considered a "real" programming language.

3. Better bug support

Don't get me wrong, as these things go, NI's dedication to support is fantastic. I wish more companies did half as good a job. And the new Known Issues page and he listing of CARs in the release notes are great.

It just seems to me that a major version is released, we get a bugfix version a few months later, then all support for that version ends. I don't like feeling pressured to upgrade every six months or so, just to avoid bugs that crash LabVIEW to the desktop. Especially because each new version introduces bugs of its own. Right now, my main project is locked into 8.20 because I need to remain compatible with a colleague at a different location. I found a crash bug just the other day, reported it, but it's fixed in 8.5, so I'm out of luck.

It seems that NI favors the software-as-service paradigm and I understand why that's good for them. As a user, I disike it. It requires me to be dependent on an external factor I have little control over.

4. Executables. It's odd that the whole point of pretty much every other language out there is to create executables that run on non-development machines, but doing the same for LabVIEW requires a $1000 add-on. It makes it difficult to distribute what you've written to non-developers and I suspect that hampers the spread of LabVIEW.

Maybe none of this is important and the people that need to know about LabVIEW already know. Maybe NI is content with LabVIEW's niche-ness. Maybe I've just been drinking the LabVIEW Kool-Aid too much and need to get a life, but I'd like to hear what other people think.

(What's the best forum for this? It's not really technical and just me bloviating, so I'm sticking it in the Lounge, even though it is LabVIEW related.)

[Mache]

QUOTE(Val Brown @ Oct 18 2007, 05:12 PM)

Yes and no. IE was never "free" - it was bundled into the OS which had to be purchased....

Firefox vs IE -- FWIW I use IE in Windows and Safari in Mac ....

IE was not truly bundled until ver 3.0 and as an after thought on Win 95. In fact the original Retail Windows 95 did not contain IE!!. Only a few OEM versions did. You could buy IE as an addon as part of Windows 95 Plus Pack. People were using Compuserve, AOL and Prodigy. Netscape Came along and changed the whole concept. But you had to pay $40.00. Then IE introduced 3.0 and soon 4.0 making it available as free download. They later went and bundled it with Windows 97 which was never released but started a firestorm we all know about. It was released with Windows 98. To MS credit IE4 was ahead of Netscape. Anyway It's water under the bridge now.

As far As browsers go, I use Maxthon. But then it is a preference. I like the "Undo" feature on Maxthon a lot. I have all three browsers on my Computer. But look at the stats http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp Firefox has made great inroads. Based on Stats it seems mainstream to me. But there is something new and better around the corner. Maxthon has 30% share in China and may be the fastest growing browser today.

But more about LabVIEW. If I ask a few engineers, who have just heard about LabVIEW and have not dabbled with it a lot, they will say "LabVIEW is a programming language more suited towards controlling machines and sensors". In fact this is how it is described to the management gurus in the MegaCompany where I am at present. In fact that is how it is sold and accepted into many work places. This perception needs to change and NI is the only one who can change it. For e.g. NI advertisement is targetted in magazines and publications which are geared towards people who design test systems or machines. So to become mainstream this needs to change... It is for NI to do this, we can gripe about it but thats all.

Visit http://www.ni.com/labview/ and read the short intro of LabVIEW. If you are not a scientist or Engineer Stay away...!!

Mache

[Justin Goeres]

QUOTE(Mache @ Oct 18 2007, 07:24 PM)

But more about LabVIEW. If I ask a few engineers, who have just heard about LabVIEW and have not dabbled with it a lot, they will say "LabVIEW is a programming language more suited towards controlling machines and sensors". In fact this is how it is described to the management gurus in the MegaCompany where I am at present. In fact that is how it is sold and accepted into many work places. This perception needs to change and NI is the only one who can change it.

As I was reading that my mind floated back to some of the demos in the LabVIEW Zone at NIWeek. My recollection (and anyone can feel free to correct me on this) from the 2 NIWeeks I've been to is that the applications that are on demo on the LabVIEW Zone are basically confined to two categories:

• Applications that do really neat things with NI hardware, even if they're not "industrial" applications (like the DDR machine or the Beatbox demo (which I guess wasn't in the LabVIEW Zone, but you know what I mean)), and...
  
• Little games and toys put together (from the rumors I've heard) by AEs. (which, if you'll excuse my condescension, are not always that impressive.)
  

What I would love to see in the LabVIEW Zone is, for instance, an image-editing program, or an MP3-playing app with playlist management, written in 100% pure G and running as a compiled, standalone executable (with the source code on the machine, too, so we can see under the hood :ninja: ). Something that would make people who see it say, "There's no way that's done in LabVIEW." I'm not saying that NI needs to build and support an image editing app just to prove a point, but the fact is the most of us have never seen any "mainstream"-style applications written in LabVIEW, even though we're the ones who are already drinking the Kool-Aid.

Of course, this is the kind of thing that could come from the community, as well. Is it time for those of us who want to see mainstream applications in LabVIEW to step up to the plate? (with all that spare time we've all got on our hands, of course. )

[eaolson]

QUOTE(Justin Goeres @ Oct 18 2007, 10:22 PM)

...or an MP3-playing app with playlist management...

Darn you for starting me thinking about that. But then it occured to me, is such a thing really possible? Looking under the Sounds pallette, there seems to be a function to play a WAV file, but not an MP3. I guess you could decompress an MP3 to a temporary WAV and play that, but that seems inefficient.

[Yair]

MP3 is a proprietary format - to write software which decodes it you need a license. My understanding is that you can freely use existing software which decodes it (e.g. a DLL or an ActiveX) and such players have already been written and posted online long ago.

[hooovahh]

At my engineering college, which takes 4.5-5 years, an electrical engineer is only required to have one course on programming, and it's Java; yeah we're kinda weird like that. My college also has LabVIEW in some of the labs, but it's version 6.1 and it takes some getting used to if you've never used that version.

I totally agree about older versions of LabVIEW, they should be free. I'm sure NI would find it difficult to support all these free users but it probably would drive up business. But how far back should be free? 6.1? 7.0? 7.1? 8.0? or 8.20?

I don't think the LV runtime will be built into any OS soon, but NI should at least support a non installed runtime for LabVIEW executables. That trick with putting the right dlls in the right directories worked for older version of LabVIEW, but don't work with 8.0 and newer.