LabVIEW is a Language or Tool??

[DailyDose]

I think the best argument to use is the following:

LabVIEW is a tool (yes, I used the word tool) that allows you to communicate to your Computer to complete tasks.  But the buzz word here is communicate.  Whatever we Humans use to communicate a thought should be considered a language.

Anyone disagree with that?  I'm sure there's some philosophical territory I've stepped into that I have no business being in.

[aputman]

I guess I have to ask the question:

WHO GIVES A FLYING FLIP?  

Labview rocks.  Use it or move on.  

[Dennis_Knutson]

The answer is 42.

[James.M]

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@aputman wrote:

 WHO GIVES A FLYING FLIP?   

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Now that's a bit much. It does make a difference what LabVIEW is referred to as because there are a lot of people out there who program LabVIEW for a living. Being able to refer to it as "programming LabVIEW" is important because it puts the developer on the level of a software engineer rather than some Joe Schmo who "uses LabVIEW". Those who program LabVIEW applications full-time definitely have more in common with a software engineer than anything else.

(The code being called "G" has done a disservice to the craft for a long time. "G code? You mean like CNC?")

[aputman]

It may be a bit much but I wouldn't give it a full byte.  (See what i did there?)  

[billko]

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@aputman wrote:

It may be a bit much but I wouldn't give it a full byte.  (See what i did there?)  

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Then you run the real risk of blurring (byte) boundaries.

[Norbert_B]

I wonder why nobody pointed to Google and Wikipedia yet.

First of all, LabVIEW by itself (as already correctly stated in the thread) is the Development Environment, not the language. The language would be G. However, even NI often confuses this, so why should we bother here? Let's, for simplicity sake, label LabVIEW as the language.

What makes a "programming language"? Please follow that link.

Looking at LabVIEW, the important paradigms for "Programming Language" are fulfilled. That is why G ('LabVIEW') is listed as programming language in Wikipedia.

What i am really concerned about is, that you differ between TOOL and PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE. A programming language is ALWAYS a tool to achieve a solution for your task. So LabVIEW is a TOOL, but it "sub-categorizes" (new word?) to "Programming Language". Just like C# in Visual Studio does.

Is Visual Studio a programming language? NO, it's the IDE. It is a tool.

Is C# a programming language? YES, but it is still a tool for the developer to achieve his goals.....

just my 5 cents,

Norbert

[rolfk]

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@crossrulz wrote:

My current understanding is that the core of LabVIEW is written in C# now (once upon a time, it was C++, likely C before that) and then much of the IDE (like Quick Drop) is written in G.

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Actually it used to be written predominantly in C (until around LabVIEW 6) and while some of that is still present in LabVIEW, new code was almost exclusively written in C++ since then, with a little Objective C in the most recent versions for interfacing to the MacOS X Cocoa API to replace Carbon calls that Apple has since declared obsolete and are mostly unavailable for 64 bit applications (which LabVIEW for Macintosh supports since version 2014). .Net doesn't come into play in the current versions of LabVIEW except maybe for the .Net interfacing itself but even that can be completely done in C++ if you really want, but that may change in the future.