When developing applications I'm often faced with the decision of whether to develop in LabVIEW or C# since I'm proficient in both. Some of my colleagues have strong opinions about which one is best, or some have expertise in one or the other. I though it may be informative to describe my decision making process when choosing one or the other for a particular application:
- If customer has a particularly strong preference then I go with the language of their choice. Often times this has to do with the skill level in their company in order to allow their ongoing support after I've completed the project. This selection trumps all the others list below.
- If the application involves multiple buses other that serial, I generally go with LabVIEW since there are just so many already available drivers in the LabVIEW community.
- If the application only involves data analysis and, at most, serial communication, I generally go with C#.
- A big advantage of LabVIEW is its extensive library of built in function not always available with C#. So an application requiring one or more advanced functions already available in LabVIEW this favors LabVIEW. However, If I'm coding in C# and I need advanced functionality, I can typically find it in an online post or a third party tool.
- A big advantage of C# is it can provide a much richer user interface and can be more easily be configured to provide a modern user interface. The are also several very good third party feature rich control suites.
- Both LabVIEW and C# have an extensive online presence, both in forums and with MSDN for C# and the national Instruments website for LabVIEW. Extensive coding examples can be found for both languages, and with LabVIEW many examples are provided inside the LabVIEW development environment.
- LabVIEW has an advantage with support since it has both email and phone support.
- Both LabVIEW and C# have good training models, typically online although you can get customer led onsite classes with LabVIEW.