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I would like to write an interactive song. It would contain state and logic. A listener/user should be able to modify some state vars using a GUI or a MIDI interface. Listener accessible vars don't have to directly represent tempo, pitch or any other music property. They would rather represent values that logic would process in order to make changes to the song.
Do I have to write such platform myself or something fitting my imagination already exists?
Look at cSounds and PureData.
If you are happy to use Java, check out JFugue.
I have tried PureData, CSound and SuperCollider.
CSound is very cumbersome to program in, and has had severe stability issues for my requirements (24bit/96kHz realtime low latency linux) in version 4.
PureData is graphical, which makes it even harder to keep code neat and tidy then with text files. Composing is a pain because you have to build your own composition GUI, which can be powerful, but as long as I'm my only user I find it's just faster to use text.
The winner hands down is SuperCollider, because it is a smalltalk inspired object oriented language which is quite pleasant to work with. It is split into an OSC controlled sound server, and the client language. I can recommend the sound synthesis server and using the language to create instruments without reservation for its excellent stability, great flexibility and incredible power. I've used it live on stage and the performance is incredibly good.
The score creation language suffers from many-hands syndrome; in lack of recent clear leadership there are too many ways to do too many things with too many limitations, but it is still better than CSound because at least you can use reasonable high level structures.
Still looking for a composition language that just gets it right.
Have a look at Strasheela:
It's a composition system based on the programming language Oz. Learning Oz isn't easy, as it it combines the functional and the logic programming paradigm. However if you liked the SICP book, then you will probably like it too.
Strasheela treats music composition as a Constraint Statisfaction Problem (CSP), and seeks "solutions" for it. It means that the music style is defined as mathematical constraints on integer numbers (finite domain), that must be statisfied, and the built-in constraint solving system computes the solutions "automatically".
P.S.: I cannot program in Oz, but I'm on my way of learning it.
See High level languages for Computer Music and Programming Languages used for music for help.
I am not sure if it covers what you are after for, but have a look at Java Sound API. For a FAQ about what it can do see here. The benefits are that is already bundled in the SDK and JRE and that is cross platform. Also, you could build the GUI using any Java toolkit.
If it weren't for the interactive bits, I'd suggest looking at Haskore or Nyquist, both effectively being DSLs for music generation.
Definitely take a look at Alex McLean's livecoding demos, though. It's more flexible and interactive as you can possibly imagine, using SuperCollider through OpenSoundControl.
Answer is for .NET:
I found something, checkout NAudio by Mark Heath, a great .NET music library I would say it should be contained in the BCL.
midi-dot-net is another great C# project by Tom Lokovic.
For music interaction, PureData, Max/MSP and OpenMusic (these two last are from IRCAM) are the best. PureData is freeware. Google them!
I don't really get what you want to do, but here is a list of some CL music software, both for composition and cognition: http://www.cliki.net/Music
You're looking for an Audio Programming Language. Another option you should consider is Processing - used by many artists and musicians for this type of work.
-Adam
Its a shame that none said about Chuck................
Chuck is a programming language that is specifically built for music/audio generation and composition.
You can download Chuck at http://chuck.stanford.edu
its a lot easier to use,and is a lot familiar to c,c++,java etc,however its easier to learn too.You can find at Coursera about chuck for free from California arts university,link here.
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I'm in the need for some competent suggestions about where to start with audio tool development. I've been in graphics programming for several years now and thought it would be a refreshing experience to expand my knowledge in a completely other direction.
Where do you see a good starting point for a newbie like me? For the beginning, some lines of code producing cacophonous sounds would make me happy already. What audio API would you recommend when aiming for cross platform support? What do I've to consider generally?
I most likely missed to give you important information to make my intentions clear, so just ask!
Thanks in advance! :)
You don't mention any specific languages, but in any case I'd suggest trying out some higher level exploratory tools for analysis/synthesis first. If you want to explore synthesis, oscillators, filters etc then you could try something like SynthMaker. If you want to experiment with audio analysis then try a tool such as Marsyas. If you want to deal with streaming audio and playlists then take a look at the Echo Nest API. Once you've explored these higher level tools then it'll give you a starting point to dive into algorithms. Given that you have a background in graphics then much of the signal processing and filtering aspects should be familiar to you.
Graphics requires you know a lot about geometric projection, rendering, textures, etc.
Audio requires you know a lot about signal generators, filters, etc. [I'm clearly not an expert]. But like the graphics stuff, reading a good book the basics of signal processing would probably help you a lot. Also, like graphics, getting somebody else's tool is pretty good and playing with to understand what they think the problem is and what kinds of things they can do makes sense.
Then, and only then, would I attempt to code something.
A good place do discuss audio processing and programming is the dsp and plugin development forum at the KVR audio website. Virtual instruments and plugins are a great way to experiment with audio programming, because the audio i/o is generally handled by host software. This would let you get making noise quickly. The skills learnt making plugins transfer to other audio applications well.
Assuming you're very comfortable with c I think the best place to start would be C Sounds http://www.csounds.com/ It's a cross platform audio processing environment suitable for any number of audio tasks including algorithmic composition.
Making Audio Plugins gives a very gentle start without too much DSP math.
The tutorials start from the very beginning and show how to create a synthesizer. The framework used is cross-platform (Win/Mac) and compiles to a standalone application as well as all major plugin formats.
In case someone new stumbles upon this question and likes to use Python, try using Nsound:
$ pip install nsound
An intro video here.
You don't mention a language. I have been doing audio development in Java, making use of core language functions and javax.sound.sampled library. For "real world" tools, probably C is a bit better. But there are uses in Java, e.g., gaming. If you'd like to see what a bit of what I've done, there are two links to check out:
home site web apps
demos for audio library work-in-progress
This is mostly if you want to roll your own. There is a LOT you can do without getting into heavy duty DSP like filters. You can still play with effects like echo, chorus, flanging, FM synthesis, wave-table synthesis, all sorts of mixing.
If you want to use libraries, I think good ones to try are Processing, PD, CSound, a couple more I'm having trouble remembering.
Also, maybe check out Praxis-live for live-coding audio.
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I am interested in audio DSP programming, but not in any specific language. I seem to recall a website that had recipes for common DSP application (compressors, limiters, et cetera), but I can't seem to find it in my bookmarks or via Google.... does anyone here know of such a place?
Short of that, I am not very mathematically literate but I have a strong sense for algorithms and logic, as well as working knowledge of a few different languages. What are some good resources for the beginning DSP programmer?
Thanks
Tom
Was the website www.MusicDSP.org?
This question: Recommended books for developing audio/music applications? lists a few books which may be relevant to you.
I'm going to suggest The Audio Programming Book from MIT Press. Lots of recipes and example code.
For general signal processing I'd recommend MatLab. MatLab has the libraries you need, good documentation and it was basically designed for this sort of thing. Now, I've not used it for audio signal processing, just sensor data and some data mining, but I think it's a good start to getting used to stuff like Fourier Transforms + various filters/windows.
Here's the MatLab documentation for the discrete fourier transform- really good:
http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/fft.html;jsessionid=x9xhNglGm1DdQNTBzyhj8DGb50QVnvCGxf3KmvM3xbnPlMbxGBQT!-779685318
If you are looking for:
1. programming languages: I would recommend MATLAB or Octave. Octave is free, and almost the same as MATLab in every respect. If you are going to be using MATLab, you can take a look at the MATLab exchange. The site contains good examples of code for solving good problems, audio DSP and otherwise.
Books: A good book to begin in DSP theory is the one by Proakis and Manolakis. Also, for a breezy tutorial to DSP, the Scientist and Engineer's Guide to DSP is one of the best. You can download the book for free and in some parts it is actually like reading a novel. Gets you upto speed with most issues that you might face in dsp and does so very intuitively with little Math.
Applications: There are tons of applications out there! And with the increasing power, processing and otherwise, of smartphones and the like, intensive DSP calculations that were once the preserve of very powerful computers are now being done on the device itself. Once you are proficient enough, you may even consider contributing to different open-source projects.
Adapted from: Where can I find good tutorials on writing audio DSP filters (lowpass, etc)?
A good filter cookbook is http://www.musicdsp.org/files/Audio-EQ-Cookbook.txt
I also recommend getting Lyon's Understanding Digital Signal Processing. I am a bit biased, though, since I was a reviewer for the second edition (but I think a third edition came out recently).
Also check out Digital Audio Signal Processing and DAFX:Digital Audio Effects, both by Udo Zölzer.
Making Audio Plugins gives a very gentle start without too much DSP math.
The tutorials start from the very beginning and show how to create this synthesizer:
There's a lot of stuff for Python in music, although most of them don't emphasize DSP. Also, some parts of the language standard lib such as the itertools can be handy.
Implementing algorithms such as the ones declared that aren't part of the packages there (e.g. a limiter, a compressor) might be easier when thinking on Python iterables instead of taking care of segregating the sample-based and block-base approach manually, and that makes it easier to make the algorithm used in real time directly. AudioLazy is a Python DSP package made to have a simple API, maybe it'll help as basic structures such as Z-Transform filters are done directly by their equation, and any Python iterable can be used as audio. Perhaps seeing its code can be helpful, as well. (Disclosure: I'm the author of this package)
About a book, I like the DAFx, which is extremely practical and audio-oriented. You might consider implementing the algorithms on there (the MATLAB code) in Python.
For a more solid knowledge on DSP, you should read the book "Discrete-Time Signal Processing", by Oppenheim and Schafer.
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In every technical publication, and on this site too, people are always comparing OO languages to Smalltalk. My experience is in Java: is Smalltalk so important that I should study it?
Smalltalk was one of the earliest object-oriented (OO) languages (with others like Simula and Eiffel) and can be said to be extremely "pure" in an OO sense:
Everything is an object and objects are only communicated with via the sending of messages
No primitives (no ints, booleans etc)
No control structures (no for, while, if etc). Sounds impossible but it's true!
No statics
It also pioneered some other, now common, stuff:
the virtual machine (and JIT compilation)
Debugging by inspection
"Hotswapping" running code
the modern IDE
Closures
Duck typing
Model-View Controller (MVC) architecture for UIs
Test-driven development (TDD) and agile methodology
And there are other things connected with Smalltalk which didn't really make it into the mainstream:
"Image"-based system rather than file-based.
Object-oriented databases
And it's fair to say that the Java collections API and the apache-commons collections API are heavily influenced by Smalltalk.
I wouldn't say that you should learn Smalltalk per se, but a familiarity with the fundamentals of these features (now present in many other languages) is surely advantageous to you.
Note that there are currently only 123 questions on here about the language, which was originally intended as an educational language (i.e. aimed at children) by its creator, Alan Kay. It is not particularly heavily used anymore. That's not to say it isn't used. JPMorgan, for example, has a large exotic derivatives risk-management system written in it.
Smalltalk has many brilliant innovations - things we're all taking for granted today, including:
being the first ever IDE
providing programmatic support for a GUI with a mouse If you learn Smalltalk GUI programming, you really will have understood MVC properly.
being built out of a small number of powerful ideas that work together extremely well
The Smalltalk way isn't to crash out on unexpected behaviour - it's to adapt. If you send a message to an object that doesn't understand it, the debugger comes up and invites you to write that method... so it provides excellent support for incremental development.
The IDE, the app that you're writing and your data are all part of the same system - so you can write your own tools and debug instrumentation far more easily.
The TDD toolset in Smalltalk is still better than any other language (see below).
Squeak Smalltalk has quite a bit of cutting-edge design research:
the morphic UI - you can get familiar with the concept of "liveness"
the seaside web framework - learn what a continuation server is and how it's radically different
Squeak has a strong connection with the OLPC software (one laptop per child) project - and could yet have a big influence on the world.
Find out what a "trait" is...
Play with the radical 3D immersive environment called Open Croquet.
Because Smalltalk is a smaller, simpler and more consistent language, with it's own built-in environment it's a much less confusing place to start teaching OOP. People who go this route end up being better Java, Ruby and C# programmers because they can learn basic OOP without all the messy inconsistencies of mainstream languages.
Some commercial Smalltalks have amazing, multi-node distributed OO database environments. I'm thinking about Gemstone.
Want to know the difference between Model-View-Controller and Model-View-Presenter - look at Dolphin Smalltalk...
The single most important reason to learn Smalltalk today is that extreme programming and scrum both got invented in the Smalltalk community... and the highly interactive style of programming you experience in Smalltalk is simpler, more powerful and direct than anything you can do with Java or C# or Ruby... and you can't really understand how well agile methods can work until you've tried to do extreme programming in Smalltalk. Few other languages (no mainstream ones anyway) have a comparable feature set.
... to really understand what TDD can be you need to use SUnit. JUnit just shows you where your tests failed. SUnit actually allows you click into the debugger at the point where the test failed and see the actual objects and how they're connected so you can see, live in the debugger how the code failed and fix it right there.
Yes, Smalltalk is so important you should study it. Why? You can understand object-oriented programming in pure, simple form. What people forget is that the Smalltalk-80 "Blue Book" has only about 90 pages devoted to the language—the language is just that simple. The other 300 pages talk about the predefined class hierarchy, which is a masterpiece of design for a class-based, object-oriented language that uses single inheritance. You will get a much deeper understanding of objects (e.g., classes are objects, and they have metaclasses, and so on off to infinity... except the knot is carefully tied to keep the system finite) than you would ever get from studying a hybrid language like Java or C++. Smalltalk matters not just because of its history but because of its simplicity:
Simple enough so you can understand the entire language and the libraries
Shows one idea (objects are all you need) pushed to its logical extreme
Everybody has something to learn from Smalltalk!
Smalltalk is one of the first two original OOP languages, the other being Simula-67. Consequently, there are two large families - the statically typed model centered around method invocation, pioneered by Simula (C++, Java, C# all belong here), and the dynamically typed model centered around message passing, pioneered by Smalltalk (Python, Ruby belong here).
Today, Smalltalk isn't particularly important on its own - there are some people still using it to write stuff, but it's definitely not mainstream. Learning it will give you some insight in how and why OOP evolved, however.
I spent about 5 minutes in a presentation at a conference last month on Smalltalk's history and influence. See Image-based development with Smalltalk. One of the more foreign concepts to today's programmers is the "image-based" development. There are some good analogies, including a DBMS and a spreadsheet.
Yes. Download the seaside one-click image, start using it with the tutorial from James Foster and you will learn at least:
how web applications should be build
how debugging is supposed to work
I agree with the others. I'm not sure if it's important per se, but it is COOL (imho).
I love that there are no loops or conditionals in the language. If-then-else is a message sent to a boolean object. Objects of type True do one thing, objects of type False do another. (Yes, True and False are subtypes of Boolean, with a single value each, true and false respectively).
It starts out being kind of counter-intuitive, but it does give you a very interesting, and deep, view of how OO programming should work...
Not only was it one of the first, Smalltalk remains to this day a paragon of OO language design. The more popular languages that came later — C++, Java, even Objective-C — all have more primitive object-orientation and are more restrictive than good old Smalltalk. Smalltalk had pervasive first-class objects, great support for runtime introspection, very natural use of duck typing and closures that worked better than I've seen in any non-functional language. I mean, we're talking about a language that had no native control structures (if, while, etc.) but was able to create them out of its object system in a way that worked seamlessly. How cool is that?
I wouldn't recommend Smalltalk for any intensive desktop app development these days (there just isn't a viable implementation IMO), but if you want to see how OO was meant to be and maybe pick up some ideas you can use in your apps, Smalltalk is a great place to look.
If you only know one object-oriented language you should consider learning a second and a third and a fourth in order to gain a broader perspective on programming with objects. Learning Smalltalk will stretch your brain because a lot of the familiar concepts we're used to in other languages (e.g. if-then-else, for(;;), while(), etc) are not there in Smalltalk. There are equivalents, obviously, but Smalltalk does things differently, and learning about different ways to do things is always a good idea.
Good luck.
I've just started to revive my interest in Smalltalk, and in my opinion, there are a few compelling things that are special about Smalltalk:
Highly productive development
environment
Built-in support for Agile/Extreme
programming methodologies
"Pure" object model
Easy to use graphics framework
None of these make it especially useful for people who are not in the software development business. My first exposure to it was when I saw a user interface for an embedded device prototyped on a PC using Smalltalk. This allowed the user interface to be modified and tested very quickly, and when completed, provided the embedded developers an "executable specification" that was far more precise than any document. I'm surprised I haven't seen this technique used far more often than I've observed in my travels during the last 20 years.
Using Smalltalk as a prototyping tool is where my interest lies: I think that given a new problem, different approaches to solving it can be tried and validated very quickly and easily in a Smalltalk environment, and once the desired solution is found it should be relatively mechanical to convert it to Java/C++/C# etc. etc. In fact, for repetitive sorts of things, it might well be possible to use Smalltalk to generate code for parts of the solution in some other target language.
The other thing about SmallTalk is that its alumni include Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham. Their work with SmallTalk spawned automated xUnit testing, software design patterns, CRC Cards and other practices which ed into XP/Agile, etc. So it could be argued that SmallTalk has been a major contributor to the modern programming landscape.
Just two comments:
Smalltalk is not object "oriented", is real objects, only objects and messages in the environment.
Smalltalk is not a language, is an environment that has a language (of the same name), but most of the "magic" here is thanks to the environment (the image).
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I've been programming for several years now and since then I have learned several concepts and techniques that have made me a better programmer (i.e. OOP, MVC, regex, hashing, etc). I feel too that by been able to learn several languages (basic, pascal, C/C++, lisp, prolog, python) I have widen my horizons in a very possitive way. But since some time ago I feel like I'm not learning any new good "trick". Can you suggest some interesting concept/technique/trick that could make me retake the learning flow?
A good paradigm shift always allows you to see things differently and become a better developer. I would suggest you read up on functional programming and maybe learn a functional language like Haskell or Scheme.
YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It) and DTSTTCPW (Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work)
It's easy to spend a lot of time thinking about edge cases, and find that you've implemented something that's completely useless. I believe that a far better approach is to knock out a simple prototype, and then poke and prod it until you understand the domain well enough to create production code.
Recognize, however, that your prototype is going to evolve into production code whether you like it or not. So write it with that in mind.
Learning how to use your IDE and tools. This to me resulted in a far greater productivity increase.
For examples:
learning how to use a source level debugger
using tools like purify/boundschecker
fxcop
etc. I realize I am dating myself, but those were big steps. There are many more.
Any time you can change the way you think about a problem or solve a problem without having to undo previous work is HUGE gain. Process, tools, etc all can help with that. Don't limit yourself to finding silver bullet techniques for productivity gains.
Watching productive people work and getting them to tell you what they are doing and why is also invaluable.
If I'm honest, using, and learning a great framework like .NET has really increased my productivity.
I'm often amazed what people are willing to reinvent due to their ignorance that the very same function already exists in the framework.
AGILE and especially Test Driven Development. Best thing to happen to software development since the invention of Object Oriented Design.
Concerning coding, I'd say design patterns and architecture patterns are always nice to look at and can help you write cleaner/better code.
For methodology I would advice Agile development that is great. There are a numerous number of techniques and methods (I'm personally fan of extreme programming) and reading that can keep you busy and improve your general approach.
Finally I'd say learn new languages like Ruby
Design patterns
SCRUM process
DiSC assessment (and understanding of how it applies to collaborative s/w development)
StackOverflow.com (of course!)
Google
... other stuff too, I'm sure
Design Patterns. Learning how to break dependence upon implementation and inheritance, and depending on interfaces (contracts) instead changed the way I think about programming.
Debugging. Once I figured out how to actually step through the code and go line-by-line, examining the underlying state, it revolutionized how I troubleshoot code.
Practice, practice practice: I didn't realize how important it is to keep working on my skills apart from work until a relatively short time ago. Mistakes and solutions I make at home make me a better programmer at work, and vice a versa. Learning should never stop if you want to be good at something, and programming isn't an exception.
If I had to pick just one, I'd say Test-Driven Design, aka TDD: write unit tests (and check that they fail) before you incrementally add features.
Try to learn to see things from the user's standpoint.
For example:
learn how to write meaningful error messages
learn how to produce usable applications
learn some basic speed-optimization techniques
Remember that the user sees your application, not your code.
VIM Quick Reference Card. After I started using advanced vim (macros, plugins) I have stopped doing any repetitive actions during coding manually.
Apart from that, Scrum and working at night, when noone interrupts You gave me the highest benefit.
If you want to expand your experience into web programming, you should try and get a good handle on the HTTP Request/Response paradigm. This will make creating web apps much easier on you because you understand the underlying framework.
(http)://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol
I would look at some of the newer languages that combine OO and functional elements, like C# or Scala.
Learning Smalltalk has helped me become more productive. It is an easy language to learn and things can be built extremely quickly. For a stunning productivity aid check out Seaside, it's a framework for building web applications. Moreover, if you have only been used to curly brace languages Smalltalk will also make you smile!
I was helped by the following paradigms in this order:
1) bottom-up programming
2) top-down programming (C, Pascal)
3) object-oriented programming (Smalltalk, Java)
4) functional programming (lisp, Mathematica)
with some logic programming thrown in (prolog).
nHibernate hands down. The fact that I dont need to write database functionality for my business objects is very useful and time saving.
High level understanding, creating good abstractions with proper dependencies, is what pays off in long term. For example, Law of Demeter is an important guideline. I recommend also reading Eric Evan's Domain Driven Design
Code generators. They're the best thing in software engineering.
Would you like to write all your projects in asm? Nope, let's generate it from C++. Or from something sat above the JVM which diligently generates the necessary machine code.
Duplicating the same source code all over the place, but stuck with a language that insists on the line noise? Use macros.
Want to use lambdas in a language that doesn't have them? Work out how to fake the anonymous name and variable scoping required then generate the boilerplate.
None of the readily available languages quite fit your pattern of thought, desired syntax or even semantics? Write a compiler for a new one.
Better languages are nice. Better design patterns are nice. Emacs is awesome. But compilers are where all the power lies in our field. I suspect the only reason they aren't mentioned in any of the other answers is that we can't imagine programming without any.
Copy/paste technique
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I'm supposed to learn how to use LabVIEW for my new job, and I'm wondering if anybody can recommend some good books or reference/tutorial web sites.
I'm a senior developer with lots of Java/C#/C++ experience.
I realize that this question is perhaps more vague than is intended on stack overflow, so how about this? Please answer with one book or web site and a brief description. Then people can vote up their favourites.
It will take some training and some time to learn the style needed to develop maintainable code.
Coming from Java/C#/C++, you probably have a good idea of good software architecture. Now you just need to learn the peculiarities of LabView and the common pitfalls.
For the basics, National Instruments offers training courses. See if your new employer can send you to a Basics I/II class to get your feet wet. They offer some online classes as well. Following classes, you can sign up to take tests for certification.
Get an evaluation copy of Labview from National Instruments; they have a well maintained help file that you can dive right into, with example code included. Look at "Getting Started" and "LabVIEW Environment". You should be able to jump right in and become familiar with the dev environment pretty quickly.
LabVIEW, being graphical is nice, but don't throw out your best practices from an application design point of view. It is common to end up with code looking like rainbow sphaghetti, or code that stretches several screens wide. Use subvi's and keep each vi with a specific purpose and function.
The official NI support forums and knowledgebase are probably the best resources out there at the moment.
Unofficial sites like Tutorials in G have a subset of the information found on the official site and documentation, but still may be useful for cross reference if you get stuck.
Edit: Basics I/II are designed to be accessible to users without prior software development experience. Depending on how you feel after using the evaluation version, you may be able to move directly into Intermediate I/II. NI has the course outlines available on their website as well, so you know what you're going to cover in each.
LabVIEW for Everyone is recently revised and quite comprehensive. Other than the free stuff available on the Web, this is probably the best place to start learning the language.
The LabVIEW Style Guide is a great book on how to organize and arrange your code and files for maximum benefit.
Object oriented programming is a recent addition to LabVIEW. The LVOOP white paper explains much about how it works and why the way it is the way it is.
It's a bit out of date, but LabVIEW Advanced Programming Techniques by Bitter, Mohiuddin and Nawrocki is still full of useful stuff.
The National Instruments forums are a great place to go for basic help. The LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architects (LAVA) is the community forum for advanced topics.
Tutorials in G, also check out the webring.
-Adam
The official NI support page and support forums are hard to beat.
It really helps having a guru around for LabVIEW.
'Arc the daft' pretty much nailed exactly what one should try to do to learn LabVIEW. However, I would not skip Basic's I and II. The classes do teach basic programming concepts and are geared to non-programmers, however they do cover the IDE extensively. The LabVIEW IDE is strange coming from a text based language and spending the time in the class learning it with an instructor can really accelerate your learning.
I would skip Intermediate 1 if you are a seasoned developer. Intermediate 1 tries to teach software engineering practices in the span of a three day course. If you are studying to get your CLD you need to know the course and the terminology for the exam, otherwise I wouldn't spend my time or capital in the course.
Subscribe to the Info-LabVIEW mailing list. It's got a lot quieter in recent times as the NI and LAVA forums have grown in popularity, but it's still read by some very experienced and helpful people, including people at NI, and if you can't find what you need elsewhere then a good question will usually get a good answer.
The NI style guide, as already mentioned, is a good reference - re-read it as you learn about more of the things it covers, it contains some densely packed good advice.
Personal top tips: look at the supplied example code (although it's not necessarily perfect); learn to use queues and notifiers as soon as possible; don't dive in to using event structures and control references until you've figured out what you can and can't do without them; and start small and simple - you should find it easy to reuse this code later on by repackaging it into subVI's as the scope of your ambitions increases. And have fun!
For me the best way to learn LabVIEW was by analyzing the in-build examples. The best forums are NI Developer Zone Community and LAVA Forums
LabVIEW is really easy to work with but the tricky bit is to know how to design your application so that it will not becaome a spaghetti. Once you get the basics (e.g. LabVIEW Introduction Course) learn how to use design patterns, events, queues, typedefs and references. Use modular architecture, avoid big structures, try 'writing' your code in small window.
It is also important to know the differences between LabVIEW versions (full/pro, and ver 7.1.1, 8.2, 8.5, 8.6, 2009), how to use version control system with the vi's (binary files), and how to keep your files in project so that you can easily reuse any code and be "DRY" (don't repeat yourself), how to build executable and what LabVIEW RunTime Engine it needs (for customers), what is DAQmx and how to use it, what are VISA drivers and which version is correct for you settings, how to use Measurements & Automation program..
When I started with LabVIEW a few years ago I was given a link to the LabVIEW Graphical Programming Course. It covers the basics and having a sound knowledge of other programming languages I think helped me pick things up quickly.
I would start with the LabVIEW wiki.
Specifically, LabVIEW Tutorial. There are lots of online references and links to LabVIEW reference books. Welcome to the world of LabVIEW!
I would suggest you start with LabVIEW for Everyone. Its a good book which covers the basics of LabVIEW well.