Programming with the 2009 controller

[Nikhil Bajaj]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The learning process for LabView takes wildly different paths for different people. I've watched complete novices pick it up in basically no time.

On the other hand, it was very difficult for me. I think that's probably because I was learning it from someone who knew it inside and out and thus could do everything quickly, but who was very poor at transferring that knowledge to someone who couldn't follow it that quickly. Most of my time was spent doing two things: unlearning a lot of what I learned about procedural programming, and getting used to the multilayered view of programs that LabView provides.

I still am not at all comfortable with it, and I still cannot "read" a LabView program written by an expert.

I definitely agree with you on this, Alan. I've used both LabView and Simulink in various project to program embedded targets, and it has nearly always been easier for me to understand and conceptualize what is going on when I write my own C code. That said, I do have a lot of friends and know many people who swear by Simulink and LabView for doing their programming for various types of things. They are extremely versatile products. I would imagine though that they might be easier to pick up for someone without any programming background than C or C++, although I personally feel that there are a lot of insights into controls and programming that you can't gain by using such high level, abstracted ways of programming.