LabVIEW was my first programming gig, back in high school. For the unfamiliar, it's a data-flow programming environment designed to drive data acquisition hard

LabVIEW was my first programming gig, back in high school. For the unfamiliar, it's a data-flow programming environment designed to drive data acquisition hardware. The programming interface is almost entirely graphical, in which you draw something between schematics and a block diagram; the usage interface looks not unlike laboratory equipment. I always loved how it made such difficult things so easy, while other languages' "simple" matters like loops required mental gymnastics. It's a great tool for its job.