labview vs visual basic vs visual C

[adamsdp]

Thanks for tips on ease of installation for user.  I have a special needs son who I want to write the software for initially and then would like to sell them to other parents.  Home based pc's would be the machines that the software would be run on and the easier the installation and more robust the programs are the better.  I will try to find more out about these issues and glad you brought them up because they weren't on my radar screen.

Dave

[adamsdp]

Rob,

Thanks for the tips and advice on using VB.NET and Visual Studio.  They sound like great choices and am glad for the input so I can switch gears and investigate the options you mentioned.   My target market eventually will be users of home based pc's and my thought is that focusing on windows will cover the vast majority of users but any advice here of course will be welcomed.   As far as elegance in writing some of the code in LabVIEW, I believe I experienced this when trying to do some of the basic operations needed in a spelling program I want to write.   I felt like I was jumping throught hoops a bit to get it done in LabVIEW vs instrumentation applications where the code generation flowed (no pun) easily. 

Dave

[smercurio_fc]

If you are writing this for your own personal use, and then to potentially sell it, there is another important factor involved, and that is the LabVIEW license. If you don't own your own copy and are going to try to use a copy that you may have at work, there are legal and ethical issues with this.

[adamsdp]

I will try to add some details for a spelling program I have in mind in case more details are needed to help those offering advice on the LabVIEW vs Visual Basic/C, etc.  I would like the use to be able to enter a list of words that will be taught/maintained for the student.  For words on maintenance, an verbal instruction will be given (ie. "spell chair") and the student will be asked to type in the word.  If the student makes an error when typing, the letter will flash and if the student does not correct the letter properly, the correct letter will be popped up.  For new words that are on acquisition, the target word will be displayed and then the student will type the word in a different field.  Letters will faded from the displayed word so the student is having to remember more of the word over time.  Some type of token system will be displayed so the students will earn rewards (ie. 30 seconds of a pop up computer game) after a number of words are typed.  For a reading comprehension program, I would like to display pages of a story with audio and text and after the short story have some worksheet type of activities such as displaying a picture of the story and have the student select which phrase from a field of 2 or 3 phrases best describes the picture.   The reverse may also be a good idea - to have a phrase from the story and have the student select which picture best applies. There may also be activities such as dragging and dropping scenes from the story into the correct order.  Some of the stories may involve new verbs for the students and verbs are best displayed in video so this may be part of the program.  I hope this helps give more detals and greatly appreciate all the help.

Dave

[RobBoyer]

tst: you're right.  I shouldn't have stated that "LabVIEW is easier to use only for people without a software background".  There are many things that are easier to do in LabVIEW, but for the most part the real simplicity in LabVIEW comes from the numerous libraries written that do the hard work for you.  I have used both .NET and LabVIEW extensively and I believe that most of these LabVIEW libraries (and the idea of a data flow-based programming language in general) simplify instrumentation/automation while complicating some fundamental aspects of Windows app development such as event-driven design.  And I think Dave has made it fairly clear that this application will not be used for instrumentation.  So in my opinion, Dave has explained enough about his task to scratch off LabVIEW from the list.  The quality of documentation provided by NI alone I believe is enough to throw doubt into the prospect of using LabVIEW.

Dave: by the way, keep in mind that regardless of what development tools you use, there will probably be some components that need to be installed on the target machine.  For LabVIEW, you will need the runtime.  For .NET, you will need the .NET Framework.  For Visual C++, you will need the C++ runtime redistributable.  (Visual C++ can produce stand-alone code, but unless you want to re-invent the wheel, you'll probably be using some of the C++ runtime.)  Therefore, the quality of these components, and ease of deployment are of great importance, (like one of the other posters mentioned).  In my experience, I have had the most problems on this front with the LabVIEW runtime.

Best of luck with your project.

Rob

[tst]

I don't have enough practical experience with other languages to be able to make an informed comparison. I know I did some pure software programs in LabVIEW and they weren't that hard to create. Perhaps using VS would have been easier if I knew it. That said, I think there is relevance to the amount of experience you have with a language - learning a new one might be too hard if you can do it with the one you already know.

One very important point which was brought up was the legal issue - if you don't own LabVIEW, you probably can't sell stuff you wrote using it.

As for the technical side, what you describe seems possible and some of it is stuff I already did myself (e.g. selecting an image from a list based on text, dragging and dropping stuff). The key is just to know or figure out how to do it. It might be easier to do it with VS, but I don't have any experience with it, so I can't say.

I don't remember having any issues with distributing such applications. As long as you don't have any special dependencies, the standard installer you create with your app will include what is needed. The main problem is that in 8.x, that installer gets to be dozens of MBs. That might be a problem when downloading.

[RGreg]

Well, I wrote about this on my blog last year for test purposes, but I would question whether LV is well-suited to education software.  After working on test systems that were written in C, VB and LV, I think LV excels at this because it has a dedicated champion in NI that pushes the software in that direction, as well as a large community of fellow-travelers that can help.

But if you're using it for a totally different purpose, then you may be alone.  I did a search on Google and quickly found several interesting articles that would help me if I were going to do something like this:

Create Your Own Educational Software
How do I develop accessible educational software?
Combining interactivity and improved layout while creating educational software for the Web

So there is certainly a community of people out there who do this sort of thing for a living.  But I expect that none of them write code in LV, so if you - as an example - were looking for an algorithm specific to educational software, they could probably supply one in the form of .NET or C++ but not LV.

But I may be wrong.  Why not seek out some people who write educational software and find out what environment they use for coding?

[Ray.R]

Very good suggestion RGreg!  😄

[adamsdp]

Thanks for the links and your advice.  I will seek out those doing educational programming to see what tools they are using.  I appreciate all the great replies!

Dave

Message Edited by adamsdp on 03-12-2008 09:54 AM