Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by BobbyTables2 698 days ago
I agree.

LabView’s shining examples would be trivial Python scripts (aside from the GUI tweaking). However, it’s runtime interactive 2D graph/plot widgets are unequaled.

As soon as a “function” becomes slightly non trivial, the graphical nature makes it hard to follow.

Structured data with the “weak typedef” is a minefield.

A simple program to solve a quadratic equation becomes an absolute mess when laid out graphically. Textually, it would be a simple 5-6 line function that is easy to read.

Source control is also a mess. How does one “diff” a LabView program?
5 comments
jki275 698 days ago
When I had some customers working with it a few years ago, they were trying to roll out a visual diff tool that would make source control possible.

I don't know if they ever really delivered anything or not. That system is such an abomination it drove me nuts dealing with it, and dealing with scientists who honestly believed it was the future of software engineering and all the rest of us were idiots for using C++.

The VIs are really nice, when you're connecting them up to a piece of measurement hardware to collect data the system makes sense for that. Anything further and it's utter garbage.

link
dagw 697 days ago
How does one “diff” a LabView program?

Take a look at FME, another visual 'programming language'. They've done a lot of work with their git integration, including diffing and handling merge conflicts.

https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-Fo...

link
marcosdumay 697 days ago
Python's equivalent of LabView would be Airflow. Both solve the same CS problem (even though the applications are very different).

Airflow it almost universally famous for being a confusing, hard to grasp framework. But nobody can actually point to anything better. But yeah, it's incomparably better than LabView, it's not even on the same race.

link
DonaldFisk 697 days ago
> Source control is also a mess. How does one “diff” a LabView program?

With LabVIEW, I'm not sure you can. But in general, there are two ways: either by doing a comparison of the underlying graphs of each function, or working on the stored textual representations of the topologically sorted graphs and comparing those. On a wider view, in general, as different versions of any code are nodes in a graph, a visual versioning system makes sense.

link
jmholla 697 days ago
> How does one “diff” a LabView program?

LabVIEW has a built-in differ.

link