I'm not bashing Labview. Where I work, there are people who know it extremely well, and scoffed at our group going with Python for our automated testing and instrument control. Our group, however, had several people who knew Python, and I found it easy enough to pick up (not a piece of cake, but not that hard, either). There is a huge Python community. It did what we needed, did it well, has proven relatively straightforward to maintain and update, and much of the knowledge developed has been transferable to completely different applications.
In my former job, MEs loved Labview. It's all they ever knew. It did what they needed.
For home use, of course you can use their free version. But I can use Python, or other software at home and at work. The advantage for me is that I can get better at a smaller set of tools. This is a big plus for me, because I don't really like programming that much and I don't consider myself very good at it. I just do it to get the job done.
Just to be clear, the list of things I gave is NOT Labview specific. But, all those things have happened to me, and I have become sensitized to them. In my last job, I became quite good at using Saber for simulation. Then it went through a lot of changes, almost went away, and then went from very expensive to super expensive. My company dropped to one license to support one engineer with one application that they could not do without, and anyone else had to transition to something else. I went with Orcad. When it became harder to find a free license, I switched to LTspice. Great for many years, until my current job, where we are moving in a direction that will most likely collide with their licensing terms. The next one I use will be open-source, although I can at least keep most of my Spice models.
I used to love MathCAD. Then PTC bought them. Their salespeople lied to our procurement and sources, all our individual licenses got yanked from underneath us, and then they broke much of the software. It was at this point that I consciously decided to favor open-source solutions whenever I thought it could do a reasonably good job.
This approach has not been without it's own problems. It is not always feasible, it can also lose support or development can cease, etc. But, on the few occasions where that happened, it was relatively easy to move my designs and data to another solution. We have occasionally paid a developer to fix or enhance something, and we have generally been happy. And, when you work for a company, you have hard numbers that you can claim for money saved, and this can be leverage to buy the equipment or commercial software that you need. Finance people love hard numbers...
All that being said, there are jobs where Labview proficiency is a requirement, so a free edition is a great way to learn. And, I firmly believe whatever you do in the privacy of your own home (or lab) is your own business
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Cheers,
John