I’m throwing my hat into the ring.\u00a0 There are many smart people out there blogging about LabVIEW, and for a couple of years now I’ve wondered if I had anything to add to the LabVIEW community by creating my own LabVIEW blog.\u00a0 I think the answer is a definite maybe.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0 The tipping\u00a0point for me was the introduction of\u00a0the blog venue on our own website.\u00a0\u00a0Now I don’t have to think in terms of “do I have enough\u00a0LabVIEW topics\u00a0I want to write\u00a0about in order to justify creating a blog”, I can just write what I’m thinking as one part of a wider purpose\u00a0blog and if somebody finds it interesting, great.\u00a0 So here we go:<\/p>\n
Call me a nerd, but I love LabVIEW.\u00a0 LabVIEW is a graphical programming language.\u00a0 No, I don\u2019t mean you create graphics with it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a programming language, but instead of typing cryptic words that hardly resemble english, the source code is graphical.\u00a0 It\u2019s a series of icons\u00a0linked together by wires, kind of like a circuit board, but the wires carry information instead of electrons.\u00a0 LabVIEW is very powerful in that with relatively little coding you can achieve a lot of functionality very quickly.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy because the Integrated Development Environment (IDE)\u00a0has an event-driven, non-intrusive compiler, so you always get immediate feedback when a compile error exists instead of waiting till later and crossing your fingers.\u00a0 And it\u2019s fun because you have the building blocks at your finger tips and all you have to do is assemble them in the right configuration to solve problems.\u00a0 It feels a lot like solving puzzles rather than work.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been very fortunate to be able to make a good living doing work that I really enjoy, and most of that job satisfaction is directly attributed to LabVIEW.\u00a0 I have a hard time not being a work-aholic in part because I enjoy my job so much.\u00a0 Why stop what I enjoy doing?\u00a0 If I had more free time at home I would spend even more time on LabVIEW forums learning about what other\u00a0users are doing with LabVIEW, both as a way to further develop my own skills and as a way to network with other LabVIEW enthusiests.\u00a0 But alas, there are only 24 hours in a day and there are so many things I want to do.\u00a0 I regret that I don\u2019t get to spend more time contributing to the LabVIEW user community, but I think it\u2019s the right decision for me at this time in my life.<\/p>\n
Some people may call me crazy, but let me share my heart with you.\u00a0 I actually think that God has a calling on LabVIEW, and that I am playing some part in it by advocating LabVIEW to staunch Software Engineers who refuse to take graphical programming seriously, too much of a paradigm shift for some to overcome; and by\u00a0promoting\u00a0it to future Software Engineers who are not yet ingrained in their ways.\u00a0 National Instruments already has many published Case Studies about how LabVIEW has been and is being used by industry, government, and academia to do wonderful things to improve our world.\u00a0 I think God will continue to use LabVIEW, or something that can trace its roots back to LabVIEW, to really solve some of the big problems of our world and be the foundation for software development of the distant future.<\/p>\n
Think about it.\u00a0 We all want to get to a point where we can talk to computers naturally and have them understand us, think about the ship computer in Star Trek.\u00a0 No, think bigger than that, we want computers to be able to read our minds.\u00a0 We usually know what we want to accomplish, but it takes time and effort to organize those thoughts into a series of actions, learn how to convey those actions to the computer,\u00a0and then execute those actions, whether that be through a microphone, a mouse, or a keyboard.\u00a0 Think about the expression \u201ca picture is worth a thousand words\u201d.\u00a0 Most engineers naturally think in terms of diagrams, they communicate to ourselves and others how things interact, or that things must be performed in a particular sequence with certain\u00a0decision points along the way.\u00a0 In fact, the Unified Modeling Language (UML)\u00a0is a graphical \u201clanguage\u201d, an agreed upon convention for documenting ideas in the form of various types of diagrams.\u00a0 UML has come to be a foundational component of software design.\u00a0 If the design has already been captured graphically, why should it be implemented as text?<\/p>\n
In the distant future I think people will be writing software simply by imagining it.\u00a0 They know what needs to be accomplished, and as they conceptualize how to accomplish it, the IDE will in real-time throw together diagrams that reflect what they are conceptualizing.\u00a0 Similiar to a mirror that reflects our physical image, I think software development environments will someday show us our mental image, allowing us to provide clarity to those images at astonishing speed.\u00a0 When we are satisified with the images, the compiler may ask us a series of questions to get futher clarification on some details, and then you\u2019re done, the software works.\u00a0 Test it, ship it, on to the next project.<\/p>\n
I think graphical programming in LabVIEW is light-years ahead of any other programming language in reaching this\u00a0Big Harry Audacious Goal (BHAG).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Future of LabVIEW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-labview","wpcat-15-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p504YJ-fl","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2719,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2013\/04\/religious-about-labview","url_meta":{"origin":951,"position":0},"title":"Religious about LabVIEW","author":"Nate","date":"April 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I realized this week at the CLA Summit that I am religious about LabVIEW. What does this mean? It means that despite conflicting evidence and statements made by individuals about the strengths and weaknesses of LabVIEW (including key individuals within NI), I have made a choice long ago to have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LabVIEW"","block_context":{"text":"LabVIEW","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/labview"},"img":{"alt_text":"CLA Logo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/LabVIEW_Cert_Arch-4c-300x81.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":954,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/labview-exceptions-a-paradigm-shift-to-error-handling-in-labview","url_meta":{"origin":951,"position":1},"title":"LabVIEW Exceptions: a paradigm shift to error handling in LabVIEW","author":"Nate","date":"December 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a presentation I gave to about 40 Certified LabVIEW Architects back in March 2010\u00a0at the\u00a0CLA Summit in Austin, TX.\u00a0 It presents some ideas on ways in which exception handling error techniques that are used in C++ and Java could be incorporated into LabVIEW by National Instruments, and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LabVIEW"","block_context":{"text":"LabVIEW","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/labview"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10578,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/unit-testing-in-labview","url_meta":{"origin":951,"position":2},"title":"Unit Testing in LabVIEW","author":"Nate","date":"March 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Attached are the slides and example project presented by Nate Moehring during the March 1st, 2018 presentation at the LabVIEW Architect Forum on advanced tips and tricks for writing unit tests in LabVIEW.\u00a0 Some justification is provided for unit testing in general, but most of the presentation covers the advanced\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LabVIEW"","block_context":{"text":"LabVIEW","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/labview"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10582,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/labview-tortoise-or-hare","url_meta":{"origin":951,"position":3},"title":"LabVIEW – Tortoise or Hare","author":"Nate","date":"March 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Attached are the slides presented by Nate Moehring on Sept 19th, 2017 at the Certified LabVIEW Architect Summit on best practices for managing performance risks associated with LabVIEW applications that handle large amounts of data, as well as advanced tips and tricks for writing high performance LabVIEW code. LabVIEW -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LabVIEW"","block_context":{"text":"LabVIEW","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/labview"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1684,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2011\/10\/accessing-objects-by-reference-in-labvoop","url_meta":{"origin":951,"position":4},"title":"Accessing Objects By Reference in LabVOOP","author":"Nate","date":"October 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/decibel.ni.c...\/docs\/DOC-18320 Motivation for this presentation: At the 2011 CLA Summit, National Instruments asked us what we thought was missing from LabVIEW or what needed to be improved. I already knew NI\u2019s position on this, but my feedback to NI and direct conversation with Stephen Mercer, father of LabVOOP, was that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LabVIEW"","block_context":{"text":"LabVIEW","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/labview"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1896,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/separating-user-interface-from-implementation-in-labview","url_meta":{"origin":951,"position":5},"title":"Separating User Interface from Implementation in LabVIEW","author":"Nate","date":"March 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I had the opportunity to give the opening presentation at the 2012 Certified LabVIEW Architect on March 5th. \u00a0An expanded title \u00a0would be \"A Survey of Tools and Techniques for Separating the User Interface from Business Logic Implementation in LabVIEW\", but that doesn't fit on a slide very well. 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