Thank Goodness for LabVIEW 8

[jgcode]

I would thought I would share a little insight into my head :ninja:

Unfortunately there are parts of your work day that suck. I love programming in LabVIEW. I started in LabVIEW 8 and have never looked back - until recently that is. I can understand clients that prefer not to have code regularly maintained due to cost. But working on 8 year old code is a joke. Now I don't mind using LabVIEW 7 (even though there is no project) because you can do cool stuff like this or this. But I have had to use LabVIEW 5 a bit recently and it is enough to make a grown man cry (yes I have been known to cry over this)

Here is a current list of things off the top of my head that annoy me (some might be attributed to options but I am not annoyed to look): :headbang:

No project (I cannot live without my project)

Unbundle/bundle must be statically set

Cannot use auto-select tool (I cannot live without my autoselect tool)

No autogrow on structures – code gets easily hidden

Missing latest VI and structures that I am used to

Different icons for common VIs (results in high usage of context help)

Tunnels – what's with that! Is it auto indexed? Or is it not?

No browse button on FP folder control

Cannot delete from BD

Cannot double click on BD terminal and go to FP control

Cannot right click and select Open Type Def

Its' slower

I guess design patterns were being invented around then because I am yet to see one! It seems spaghetti is in and globals rule!!

I have to work in a VM (which isn't that bad but I can't get VMWare to work with USB devices but that is another post...)

And lastly it's just plain ugly

So instead of turning this into a gripe about LabVIEW 5 I want to say thank you to everyone that has helped make LabVIEW into what it is today. People complain all the time, but right now every time I open up 8.5 I am in love again! I guess you can take stuff for granted, but even as a somewhat noob to LabVIEW coming in at LabVIEW 8, I realise I am very lucky to have all the features I have today that make me enjoy my job!

Software is about the user experience and this user is satisfied! - so thankyou LabVIEW team (NI and LabVIEW Community). :beer:

Word.

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Hi JG,

I started before LV 5 so my list is much shorter than yours. The two things I miss are;

1) Re-size grab points were at the corners and not in the middle (I often sit and stare wondering when the grab point will show up)

2) Re-size objects dialog.

RE: slow

Was it LV 5 of LV 5.1 that introduced multi-threading? (so little memory, too lazy to do a search).

LV 6.1 introduced a lot of speed functionality if memory serves me.

Ben

[PJM_labview]

Count yourself lucky, if you had to go back in LV 4 you will not have any undo functionality...

Fortunately I never had to experience this (I started on LV 5.0), but in my previous job I was using a cad drawing like software that had no undo. There is nothing more frustrating to make a change to a part, wait several minutes for it to render, and then realize than this change was wrong and you can't undo... --> You end up saving a LOT of copy of the same files, and when your files are large...

PJM

[crelf]

QUOTE (PJM_labview @ Jun 4 2008, 12:23 PM)

Count yourself lucky, if you had to go back in LV 4 you will not have any undo functionality...

No undo actually made me cry once...

[jgcode]

QUOTE (crelf @ Jun 5 2008, 05:37 AM)

No undo actually made me cry once...

Haha...my boos started coding in like LV 1 or 2..sucker

QUOTE (neB @ Jun 5 2008, 12:58 AM)

Hi JG,

I started before

LV

5 so my list is much shorter than yours. The two things I miss are;

1) Re-size grab points were at the corners and not in the middle (I often sit and stare wondering when the grab point will show up)

2) Re-size objects dialog.

Hi Ben

Good call! Add 1) to the list - that annoys me so much I forgot to add it

Haven't ancountered 2) ...yet...

[gleichman]

QUOTE (crelf @ Jun 4 2008, 03:37 PM)

No undo actually made me cry once...

Yeah, there was nothing like an accidental control drag in a 20 deep case structure to make you want to hurt an NI engineer.

I've recently implemented "undo" into the sequence editor of my test executive. After living without undo in LabVIEW for so many years, this should have been an obvious feature to add, but it was a user request, not my own idea.

- Alan

[crelf]

QUOTE (gleichman @ Jun 4 2008, 09:53 PM)

I've recently implemented "undo" into the sequence editor of my test executive.

I did something very similar a few years ago - I stopped trying to support my own editor and started using TestStand

[gleichman]

QUOTE (crelf @ Jun 5 2008, 05:49 AM)

I did something very similar a few years ago - I stopped trying to support my own editor and started using TestStand

I don't think so. TestStand 4.0 was released in April 2007 and it was the first version of TestStand with undo. I actually implemented my undo command a months earlier. My newest feature is a syntax checker.