LabVIEW thoughts, part 1

My last couple posts of the year will be about LabVIEW.  In fact, my first couple posts of the new year will be as well.  I guess I have three reasons to do this.

LabVIEW is all over
This blog is not meant to be LabVIEW-specific.  I've said this all before but it bears repeating:

• I am not nor have I ever been an NI employee.  
• I have never worked for a test engineering house that has a tight NI-LV connection (well, I once considered it).  
• I'm just a test engineer.

However, LV has a huge presence in the test engineering field, and I am a good example of that:

1. Even though I've done a fair amount of programming in VB and C++, historically I still do most of my work in LV.  
2. I've been a certified LabVIEW developer going on 5 years now.  
3. Of the 200 or so posts I've written over the past seven years, about 25% were about LV in some way.

Recent projects
Over the past two months I've been heavily invested in a LV project at my new company.  Last spring I wrapped up my first big LabVIEW-OOP project.  Before I was laid off, I had just finished a LV tool for writing and reading build data for the manufacturing floor.  All this LV-specific work has got me to thinking about things.

New environment
With my latest company I experience something that I've seldom had in the world of startups:  colleagues.  I sit in a cubicle area with four other test engineers in easy talking distance.  A dozen more sit within a 30 second stroll.  That level of interaction has gotten me to think about LabVIEW in different ways.

Anyway, I'll write at least one more post on this topic before the year is out, maybe two.  But it's Christmas, so things can get busy.