The cool thing about labview which gave me a hard time was the visual aspect of how you wrote algorithms (connecting boxes). Yeah, it is more intuitive but for a guy who programmed in c++ and (ugh) VB for a couple years, it was weird at first. But if you are new to the whole thing, it is great.
I have never known a lab that used VB as its programming environment. Usually it is either c/c++, Java, or one of the math programs (matlab, mathematica, maple, etc...). In general, I would recommend using microcontollers for controlling your experiments. However, you mentioned that you are doing stuff at the quantum level, so these may not be fast enough for you (the ones I use are 20MHZ). However, I must say that the PIC series of microcontollers can be programmed in a variety of languages and has a great deal of flexibility.
One of the main problems is that a lot of the software for contolling lab equipment is either homebrew for a specific application (as is the case with some dynamic clamping software in the neurosciences) or made for a wide variety of applications (labview), but is not open source.
The best option may be to get a company made environment which can have functions written for it in another programming language and customize it. However, coming from a biology side of things I do not know what your specific needs would be for quantum computing, and thus cannot give any ideas as to that specifically. Good Luck.
I know how you feel. I was in the same situation two years ago (now I am in college). About the calc thing, TEACH YOURSELF. Why is there this stigma that you can only learn from a teacher. Yeah it helps, but if you put in just a little more effort, you can understand it better then if you learned it in class. I was not allowed to take calculus in HS, and so I taught myself. By the end of the year I was helping out my peers with their calc homework and was able to place into the honors calc class when I got to college. So my advice to you is to take a break from/. and steal a calc book from your school!
here here, i fully support your opinion. he seems to ignore all the research in neural computation from the 80s and 90s (dendritic integration and synaptic processing). however, he seems well versed in the old "institutional" view of AI.
The cool thing about labview which gave me a hard time was the visual aspect of how you wrote algorithms (connecting boxes). Yeah, it is more intuitive but for a guy who programmed in c++ and (ugh) VB for a couple years, it was weird at first. But if you are new to the whole thing, it is great.
I have never known a lab that used VB as its programming environment. Usually it is either c/c++, Java, or one of the math programs (matlab, mathematica, maple, etc...). In general, I would recommend using microcontollers for controlling your experiments. However, you mentioned that you are doing stuff at the quantum level, so these may not be fast enough for you (the ones I use are 20MHZ). However, I must say that the PIC series of microcontollers can be programmed in a variety of languages and has a great deal of flexibility. One of the main problems is that a lot of the software for contolling lab equipment is either homebrew for a specific application (as is the case with some dynamic clamping software in the neurosciences) or made for a wide variety of applications (labview), but is not open source. The best option may be to get a company made environment which can have functions written for it in another programming language and customize it. However, coming from a biology side of things I do not know what your specific needs would be for quantum computing, and thus cannot give any ideas as to that specifically. Good Luck.
uh... I understand teaching your kid, that made sense. What did not make sense was everything else.
I know how you feel. I was in the same situation two years ago (now I am in college). About the calc thing, TEACH YOURSELF. Why is there this stigma that you can only learn from a teacher. Yeah it helps, but if you put in just a little more effort, you can understand it better then if you learned it in class. I was not allowed to take calculus in HS, and so I taught myself. By the end of the year I was helping out my peers with their calc homework and was able to place into the honors calc class when I got to college. So my advice to you is to take a break from /. and steal a calc book from your school!
here here, i fully support your opinion. he seems to ignore all the research in neural computation from the 80s and 90s (dendritic integration and synaptic processing). however, he seems well versed in the old "institutional" view of AI.