Product by National Instruments [L1 ] Allows programming in a language called G. Has well documented libraries that come in handy when you are solving all kinds of 'automation' problems.
Connects to many instruments/devices by the use of VISA,IVI,GPIB,TCP/IP or UDP,ActiveX... name it LabVIEW plays it.
Programming in LV is (even more) fun (than programming Tcl ;-)) because you do not need to type your program (G), you just draw it. Even kids can do it [L2 ]! (What would be a starters age for Tcl?)
(The result is something that is sometimes called spagetti-code, in the real meaning of spagetti. Check out [L3 ] for an impression of what it looks like.)
The most fun part is that it can be glued together with Tcl by the use of tcom as mentioned in [L4 ] .
Setok: For me the most interesting thing about LabVIEW is that it's really the only programming language I can think of where handling concurrency is just as easy as coding sequentially. Indeed, concurrency is the natural way to do things in LabVIEW (whether it actually runs the threads concurrently is another matter, but there is potential in that type of coding).