LabVIEW NXG to make LabVIEW easy (again)
The graphical programming environment LabVIEW (LV) made its first appearance in 1986. Since then it has grown and evolved in a de facto industry standard for data acquisition, instrument control, and industrial automation applications without ever really changing its appearance. Now, 31 years later, National Instruments (NI), the publisher of the tool, has decided that the time has come to shift gears by introducing the all new LabVIEW NXG.
The graphical programming environment LabVIEW (LV) made its first appearance in 1986. Since then it has grown and evolved in a de facto industry standard for data acquisition, instrument control, and industrial automation applications without ever really changing its appearance. Now, 31 years later, National Instruments (NI), the publisher of the tool, has decided that the time has come to shift gears by introducing the all new LabVIEW NXG.
The reason of being of LV was to make programing easy for people without (good) programing skills, the graphical approach intended to limit writing lines of code to a max. Although this may have been true in 1986, today, however, even NI admits that starting with LV may be a daunting experience that requires too much programing. LV NXG was created to remedy that.
Of course, over time there have been many revisions of LV, with every year a major release, this year not being any different and so the current version is LV 2017, but these were always additions to and improvements of the existing program, the underlying technologies never really changed. LV NXG, with NXG meaning “next generation”, on the other hand, is a new platform built on and using the technologies of today. Although using the same compiler back end as LV 2017, LV NXG is brand new, offering the comfort and connectivity that people have come to expect of modern software.
Current users on a maintenance contract will get LV NXG 1.0 for free together with LV 2017. Even though LV NXG 2.0 is already being beta tested and is scheduled for release later this year, version 1.0 should be considered a real version targeted at people new to the tool. Support for LV “classic” will continue for many years to come, its user base is simply too large to throw away.
The reason of being of LV was to make programing easy for people without (good) programing skills, the graphical approach intended to limit writing lines of code to a max. Although this may have been true in 1986, today, however, even NI admits that starting with LV may be a daunting experience that requires too much programing. LV NXG was created to remedy that.
Of course, over time there have been many revisions of LV, with every year a major release, this year not being any different and so the current version is LV 2017, but these were always additions to and improvements of the existing program, the underlying technologies never really changed. LV NXG, with NXG meaning “next generation”, on the other hand, is a new platform built on and using the technologies of today. Although using the same compiler back end as LV 2017, LV NXG is brand new, offering the comfort and connectivity that people have come to expect of modern software.
Current users on a maintenance contract will get LV NXG 1.0 for free together with LV 2017. Even though LV NXG 2.0 is already being beta tested and is scheduled for release later this year, version 1.0 should be considered a real version targeted at people new to the tool. Support for LV “classic” will continue for many years to come, its user base is simply too large to throw away.
