Visual programming (of which LabView is a glorious example) is a mash of what system designers once called DataFlowDiagrams and ControlFlowDiagrams (just dated myself badly). I love LabView as a teaching language; I end up drawing DFD's all the time, anyway. Might as well compile the design from the picture (spec
. Step through the data manipulations, showing the intermediate results along the way? Priceless. Most of the youngster robot projects use some form of visual programming for good reason; 6 year old's can do it.
I suspect your ME mindset was amenable to learning how to program in LabView. The latent software engineer in you has pressed on from there.
TJ