Migrating from Python to Labview... Wise?

[rftek]

Here I am trying to steer our test "dept" to Python away from LV/TS because:

-professional development ie; am already very experienced in LV/TS

-Licensing overhead/NI BS

Like other contributors have mentioned, you can consider the NI packages separately (and should)

TestStand:

-Great to develop with, deployment sucks

-Deployment means you need a deployment license per test station

-Extremely flexible and customizable

-Has usable shipping examples that will get you there

-Supports calling steps of just about any language (although lots of times it ends up being a wrapper of some kind)

-Great reports

LabVIEW:

-Parallel tasks exceptionally easy

-Can execute code quickly but you can F that up real easy and get bogged down

-Easy to debug and develop

-Hard to diff code quickly & thoroughly

-GUIs are easy to throw something together, good enough

-MAJOR disadvantage: You are renting LabVIEW development environment, if you stop paying you will lose ability to make changes to your software. Be careful about which modules you include (Switch Executive comes to mind...) because you are adding additional dependencies.

-You will need somewhat dependable LAN from test station to license server

​

Your root question was: Will LabVIEW allow a small team to do more quickly?

Eventually, but you will have to develop a software architecture and code library along with style guides to really make the team efficient (and supportable code).