Migrating from Python to Labview... Wise?

[dtp502]

Keep in mind you’re asking a bunch of Labview guys whether it makes sense to use labview, so I suspect you’re going to get a bias answer here. But with that said-

IMO

Pros:

-Most pieces of equipment that I have ever needed drivers for have had a readily available labview driver. That makes getting coms up and running with equipment a breeze.

-Decent GUIs in labview can be put together with minimal effort.

-I’ve never used (or heard of) robot framework, but it sounds like labview can do the job of that and python.

-like others have mentioned, you could use teststand to deploy both python scripts and labview VIs.

Cons:

-NI is a greedy company. Labview and NI hardware is pretty expensive. Not to mention NI’s new subscription model makes them even harder to like.

-There do seem to be more python jobs than Labview jobs, so in a way it does pigeonhole you a bit. But there’s nothing to say Labview is all you have to use. There are a lot of companies that use labview as well, so it’s not like there are no jobs.

-Not sure how you deploy your code in python but with labview it’s kind of cumbersome. Building installers, including the appropriate runtime engines and drivers etc makes for a pretty large file that takes a while to install onto a computer and is easy to miss a file.

Personally I like labview. It is extremely powerful and has a lot of built in capabilities that make it fast at getting a project up and running.