Introduction to LabVIEW

LabVIEW is a graphical developing and testing environment unlike any other test and development tool available in the industry. LabVIEW sets itself apart from traditional programming environments by its completely graphical approach to programming. As an example, while representation of a while loop in a text-based language such as C consists of several predefined, extremely compact, and sometimes extremely cryptic lines of text, a while loop in LabVIEW is actually a graphical loop. The environment is extremely intuitive and powerful, which makes for a short learning curve for the beginner. LabVIEW is based on what is called the G language, but there are still other languages, especially C, under the hood. However, the ease of use and power of LabVIEW is somewhat deceiving to a novice user. Many people have attempted to start projects in LabVIEW only because, at first glance, the graphical nature of the interface and the concept of drag and drop used in LabVIEW appears to do away with the required basics of programming concepts and classical education in programming science and engineering. This is far from the reality of using LabVIEW as the predominant development environment. While it is true that, in many higher-level development and testing environments, especially when using complicated test equipment and complex mathematical calculations or even creating embedded software, LabVIEW's approach will be a much more time-efficient and bug-free environment which otherwise would require several lines of code in a traditional text based programming environment, one must be aware of LabVIEW's strengths and possible weaknesses.

LabVIEW does not completely replace the need for traditional text based languages and, depending on the entire nature of a project, LabVIEW or another traditional text based language such as C may be the most suitable programming or test environment.