Highlight Execution: Scrollable Forward and Backwards with Speed Throttle

[b1]

Many of us long time Labview programmers probably started out programming in Labview using the Highlight Execution heavily as a great debugging tool for watching the dataflow and figuring out our logic errors in our code. As we become more advanced programmers Highlight execution gets left behind because we are faster at debugging in other ways because the Highlight Execution way too slow for our more skilled programming techniques and understanding.  However there are certain debugging tasks that still prove Highlight execution to be the best tool for the job.  The only problem is that it too slow and has no throttling capability. Highlight Execution represents one of the best parts of Dataflow programming because it shows what is going on with the flow of logic like know other programming language.  If highlight execution were revamped and updated it would once again become the most valuable debugging technique of even the most advanced Labview programmers.  Highlight execution absolutely needs the following functionality added:

Speed Throttle-  Make the speed at which Highlight execution operates a settable feature

Scrollable-  Make Highlight Execution scrollable forwards and backwards through program dataflow allowing users to RAPIDLY hone in and pinpoint the source of errors without being limited by some arbitrary speed and direction set by current implementation.  Scrolling puts the user in control of speed and pinpoint location of stopping points.  Forwards and backwards would allow faster debugging because the user could be looking at an ensemble of parameters over and over to see exactly how they interact with each other in a finite range of code. 

Values Tree view-  It might also be helpful to consolidate each VI's wire data into a Tree  that can be displayed or not with highlighted values that are color coded to data type that only highlight in the tree while execution takes place with the ability to double the click the tree value to take you directly to the wire much like a find wire function for probes

Please consider this.  I believe that this would give Labview a huge leap forward over other programming languages ever advancing techniques of debugging.  I do not know of any debugging capabilities of any programming suite that enables forward and backwards debugging of code flow. This would be a HUGE advantage!!

[RavensFan]

Original Idea before the Idea Exchange  highlight execution speed

The first time in the Idea Exchange  Variable Speed highlight execute

And others.

allow for highlight execution speed selection

Highlight Section

[AristosQueue (NI)]

As for "step backwards", there's a reason you don't see it in LV or any other programming environment... it cannot be generally implemented. You can't rewind an event queue, a file write, an instrument generation, etc. Sure, you could replay a pure function generation, but LV already gives you that ability (pop up on subVI, select "SubVI Node Setup", enable "Suspend when called").

The closest you can come is with a reply debugger, introduced last year. VMWare 8 allows for the recording of the *entire* computer system state as a program executes -- disk, memory, instruction count, etc -- and allows you to rewind microsecond by microsecond. National Instruments began using this internally to track down some of our harder-to-reproduce bugs, and it is a very effective strategy. But it isn't something LabVIEW could ever do on its own -- you need the entire computer system to participate in that.