Quote:
Originally Posted by F22Rapture
If you have students with some programming experience, Java might be more useful. Most computer programming classes in high schools teach in Java. It's a bit more flexible than LabView, it's easier to write very complex programs, and once the students leave FIRST Java and C++ will both be more useful later on than Labview would be.
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While this might be true for "desktop" programming (the kind taught by most Comp Sci programs), I respectfully disagree.
LabVIEW is used a lot in industry for what it was originally designed for - instrumentation and testing. Many test setups I know of use NI hardware and run LabVIEW code. LV is an important skill for many engineers who aren't CS's.
LabVIEW is also an extremely powerful language. There is nothing that I know of that is simply impossible (although a few things are tricky). The FIRST libraries are also fairly easy to use from a users perspective (although there are a few design quirks that are clear marks of different code authors not collaborating closely enough - "To Digital Source" for encoders is a great example).
I also don't see any reason why Java or C++ would be harder to debug than the other - Your basically limited to printf's/language equivalents in any form, and most FRC operations don't touch pointer math so you shouldn't get segfaults with no explanation (which are almost always the worst to debug).