I tend to separate LV into the language and its graphical representation. The language is highly optimized dataflow programming with extensive hardware libraries for data acquisition and control. If your problem lends itself to a performant dataflow solution, LV is worth checking out. The machine that discovered the Higgs Boson was programmed in a custom LabVIEW.
There's a belief that LV is easy for novices to learn, such as test technicians and engineers. Interestingly, the other easy "language for the rest of us," Excel, is also a dataflow programming environment.
The graphical "language" was introduced for the Apple Mac II at a time when there was a lot of excitement for "graphical everything," and again a view that the graphical flow chart would make it intuitive for non-programming engineers. The simplest LV programs had an almost 1:1 correspondence to things that were familiar in test hardware such as knobs, switches, meters, and so forth.
Now my main critique is the sheer physical labor required to write and edit programs. This could actually lead to sloppy code, if it's too painful to refactor things. I think that if there were a good text based dataflow language, and LV adopted it, the graphical language would fall into much more limited use (e.g., for adding user interfaces to programs). That's just my hunch.
There's a belief that LV is easy for novices to learn, such as test technicians and engineers. Interestingly, the other easy "language for the rest of us," Excel, is also a dataflow programming environment.
The graphical "language" was introduced for the Apple Mac II at a time when there was a lot of excitement for "graphical everything," and again a view that the graphical flow chart would make it intuitive for non-programming engineers. The simplest LV programs had an almost 1:1 correspondence to things that were familiar in test hardware such as knobs, switches, meters, and so forth.
Now my main critique is the sheer physical labor required to write and edit programs. This could actually lead to sloppy code, if it's too painful to refactor things. I think that if there were a good text based dataflow language, and LV adopted it, the graphical language would fall into much more limited use (e.g., for adding user interfaces to programs). That's just my hunch.