I see this a lot in LabVIEW projects (using it for things in which it is cumbersome). I think it is a symptom of the "golden hammer syndrome". LabVIEW is really

I see this a lot in LabVIEW projects (using it for things in which it is cumbersome). I think it is a symptom of the "golden hammer syndrome". LabVIEW is really, really efficient for some things and people become highly proficient at it. Unfortunately, those same folks are apt to use it for things in which it is ill-advised like text-parsing. I like to think of graphical programming languages as DSL's: when they're aimed at the right problem, they're like a hot knife through butter compared to a general purpose tool. But when you start using DSL's for things in which they are not intended you end up with nightmarishly obscure codebases.