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Unread 05-01-2012, 07:14 AM
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Itamar Itamar is offline
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FRC #1943 (NeatTeam) & FRC #4590 (GreenBlitz)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Rookie Year: 2010
Location: Israel
Posts: 83
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Is switching from LabVIEW a bad idea?

Hello!
In the past four years my team has been working with LabVIEW, and lately I've been thinking about switching to C++ (or perhaps Java or Python... though C++ is the one I have in mind).

Here's why: Many of the students that join the programming team have no previous (or very little) experience with programming. As their teacher, I want the students to be able to use the knowledge they gain to any other programming field they like: game development, web development and more. Obviously working with LabVIEW will give them some understanding of programming concepts, but it will be much harder to transform that knowledge to other fields. Plus (though this is just my view), C++ just seems more challenging and... fun.

The only thing that prevented me from using a different language than LabVIEW is the understanding that each year there is less and less support for using other languages in the FRC. I am worried we will face unexpected/unsolveable bugs because of this lack of support.

Are my worries justified?
Have faced weird unsolveable problems that you couldn't do anything about, just because you weren't using LabVIEW?

Itamar.