[Greg McKaskle]

Like Eric, I work for NI on the LV team.

A clarification is that NXT is a very small subset of LV, and in fact there are pretty key language features related to data feedback that aren't present in NXT. That forces you to use variables which makes for pretty awkward expressions in a dataflow language. But still, 10,000 times more productive?

If you think the students are up for it, I encourage you to mix it up. Teach programming concepts by looking at it from different perspectives, different languages. Look at concepts rather than syntax. Look at the the robotic project and see if you can evaluate their success while allowing them to use different tools.

The goal was to build WPILib in different languages, but with similar structure to show to help teams discuss robotics problems and solutions in a more language agnostic way -- to realize that programming computers is way more than understanding syntax rules. Many of the programming languages I used when learning about programming are extinct or rare, but the concepts I learned are still valid. Whichever language you choose, see if you can expose the students to the alternates in some way and foster a compare-and-contrast approach so that all of the tools are seen in a broader light.

Greg McKaskle