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Unread 26-09-2007, 11:48
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Re: Opinions wanted: LabView-based controller?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Martus View Post
Question? Is Industry - wide scale using Lab view for their development and also are universities using Lab View for teaching programming in their curriculum?
LabView is indeed widely used, in both schools and industry. However, what I see it used for is almost entirely instrument control and data acquisition. What most of us would consider applicable to robot programming -- algorithmic transformation of inputs to outputs, tracking state, sequencing of actions, responding to feedback -- is much less common.

Where I work we use a National Instruments product called TestStand, so there is actually a lot of opportunity for that sort of programming here, but I find it a whole lot easier to use the non-graphical LabWindows/CVI for anything more complicated than a single function. "Non-programmers" naturally have the opposite opinion, but what they produce is often not easily maintainable. The LabView expert in our group does create wonderful tools and applications, though even he has trouble when they get complicated.

In the context of teaching programming, the only use of LabView I've heard of is specifically teaching LabView. For learning to program in general, a traditional procedural language like C or Java is still the rule.