ANS by (Amal K Sebastian, Certified LabVIEW Developer)
LabVIEW is unique for its capabilities to interface with and control different types of hardware modules and instruments from NI(the company that makes LabVIEW) and many other companies. The range of this interfacing starts from modules like Arduino that sit in your average Engineering UG project(The lego software is also built on LabVIEW based interface) to huge control systems that define proton deflection in the Large Hadron Collider. This is what makes it unique. Even competitors of NI make LabVIEW drivers for their hardware systems due to the popularity and wide userbase of LabVIEW in the test and measurement industry.
This, along with the graphical capabilities of LabVIEW that let the user( programmer) develop code the way he actually thinks are the selling points of the software. The big advantage here is for domain experts who are not good coders to programmatically engineer their systems. More power to the user! Time to first measurement using data acquisition systems through LabVIEW is just a couple of minutes, and it is a big thing in this industry.
Having said all of this, the power of LabVIEW is really unleashed when you use NI hardware along with it. The whole platform-based approach that NI takes on system development is seen here. It is very similar to the Apple iOS platform, where you buy into an ecosystem to be a contended user.
To summarise, LabVIEW sells because it is an easy to use software that can define the functionality of a wide range of hardware systems.
Edit 1: The point that my friend Vinit pointed out is also very relevant. I had missed it altogether. LabVIEW has an FPGA module that lets you program FPGAs directly from the LabVIEW software itself. This is way more easier for the average engineer compared to using HDL languages like Verilog or VHDL.
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