LabVIEW vs C/C++

[David Doerr]

We expect to be using C++ this season, but while developing our software we intend to use LabVIEW features not available in C++. One is the Vision Assistant already mentioned. Another -- LabVIEW has an impressive set of PID tools -- automatic and Ziegler-Nichols tuning. Joe Ross has worked with those and he can tell you lots more about them than I can.

My opinion is that C++ support does lag behind LabVIEW. I think there is still no dashboard support. I mentioned the PID tools -- those have caught up a little since the beginning of beta testing. But we did find the WindRiver Workbench C++ tools very capable and a lot of fun to work with, and we expect them to serve us well. Writing, building, downloading and running programs in C++ is very fast once you spend a short amount of time learning the process.