Java vs Labview

[Greg McKaskle]

The 2013 project creation wizard was indeed slow. But the 2014 one is much faster, taking two seconds once I entered the IP address. Wow think what you can do with those extra three seconds.

As for how long it takes to create a for loop. I timed myself. Yeah, I know, it is sorta silly, but I do this thing for a living.

for(i=0;i<10;i++){
}

Takes me about nine seconds with no mistakes. Maybe I'm slow -- I balanced my own parenthesis and curlys after all.

The same code in LV without a pinned palette took under eight seconds.

But I'm sure that there is a way to configure emacs so that three meta key smashes and boom -- all done.

Anyway, this is getting silly even for me. Writing code is more than typing or drawing. LV is graphical because it cuts down on syntactical errors. LV has also supported algebraic syntax since version 1.0. It is called the formula node, and it is in the structure palette. The attached image shows the equivalent loop and formula.

By the way, this reminds me of the geekiest race I've ever observed. I was in college, working for the nuclear engineering department. Two grad students were poking fun at one another's choice of tool for formatting equations within their thesis. So how do two gentlemen end this dispute? With a race of course.

A neutral grad student found a gnarly fluid dynamics or neutron transfer equation that took up half a page in the textbook. He placed the books next to each participant and they were off. One was typing LaTex script, the other was using a graphical formula editor in MS Word. It took each of them several minutes, and they finished in a dead tie. It was like an episode of Big Bang, but I was there.

Anyway, have fun and good luck with whatever language you choose. It is of course fun to argue and compare, but don't let that get in the way of your robot tasks.

Greg McKaskle