View Single Post
  #30   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 14-11-2011, 09:13
Greg McKaskle Greg McKaskle is offline
Registered User
FRC #2468 (Team NI & Appreciate)
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Rookie Year: 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 4,756
Greg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond reputeGreg McKaskle has a reputation beyond repute
Re: What programming Language To Use??

In Atlanta a few years ago, I said that the most important language a CS student would learn would be their second. Without belaboring the topic, here is my justification.

By the time I started college, I only knew one language, BASIC. I had rather extensive experience in computer math, solving sets of equations using various linear algebra approaches, plotting polynomials on a screen or printer; not CS, but CM. My first college course taught C, and while I sort of knew what pointers were, I saw no real value in them until I learned C. Wow. Then I thought I knew it all. Follow-on courses were in Pascal, FORTRAN, and assembly, and honestly weren't differentiated enough to displace C as the reference language in my head.

Then I had an AI course and we were given problems that would be near impossible in C. Fortunately, we were learning lisp as the course language, and it became apparent that computers were capable of being far more than procedural machines.

As others have said, any of the languages offered in FIRST are capable and offer good learning experience. The libraries are distributed in source form, and using similar terminology and implementation. This was done to allow easier comparisons and to allow students using different tools to hopefully communicate at the level of the problem rather than at the level of the tool, thus being exposed to more tools.

In all, I'm happy that FIRST now has multiple languages actively supported. I see teams being successful in all of them and transitioning to gain different experiences.

To the original poster -- there are no bad choices. Balance the opportunities with the risks, and invest as much time and energy as you can afford into this program.

Greg McKaskle

Greg McKaskle