[Greg McKaskle]

I work for NI as a member of the LV team; so you might expect me to tell you to ignore the mentors, mutiny, do whatever it takes to use LV to make your robot go.

But, that isn't going to happen. I'd much prefer that you impress your mentors by showing them respect and enthusiasm. That would mean working with them to learn how to program the robot in Java. You may be able to convince them that you use LV to do the dashboard or process some logged data. But make the decisions as a team and be sure to learn from the mentors.

If all goes well, perhaps after the robot ships or even after the season, extend the offer to help the mentors learn LV. As a team, you will be so much better off.

This situation will come up again and again over your career. Sometimes it will be a language, other times a SCC tool or a code library. Learning to do it in a positive way, to improve the unity of the team, is a great skill, much more important than either of the languages in question.

Greg McKaskle