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Re: Java vs Labview
I just spoke to someone who is going to forward links to some studies that used LabVIEW and two popular text languages to determine whether LabVIEW or a text language were better prep for learning the next text language. The conclusion? LabVIEW was an equally good prep language. It doesn't bias people against textual languages, and doesn't punish them because they were learning the wrong thing. I wish the study had continued and attempted to measure how the diversity of prep languages benefitted the ability to learn the next.
When building WPILib, we attempted to make the libraries parallel across the languages, making it easy for teams to see past the syntax and see how similar operations can be carried out in different languages. I believe that this diversity of solution, in HW, and in SW is one of the key elements of project-based learning and in the competitions such as FRC. In my opinion, it will be a sad day if FRC has only one programming option -- regardless which option it might be.
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When working on Mindstorms, our essential language elements were sequential operations, parallel operations, repetition, conditional operations, numeric math, and Boolean logic. We included strings and the rest is libraries of I/O for the brick. WeDo is for even younger kids and leaves out conditionals and Boolean operations. Both include a WaitFor block which can be explained either as a composed repetition/conditional or a unique element. I will argue that these are significant and are at the core of programming. Additionally, learning what an array is, what a string is, the difference between an integer and a float, learning that your timing specification for a delay is a minimum value and not an absolute; these are also common and significant concepts that are shared across all languages. Then there are the differences that can be used to demonstrate alternate solutions. Object based design has benefits, and drawbacks if not used appropriately. Pointers or references? Functional or Procedural? Iteration or recursion? This diversity and similarity is, I hope, offering a rich landscape to explore what programming is.
The languages I learned in college were not simply variations of Java. It didn't exist then, not even as oak, but that wan't the reason. Lisp, Pascal, C, prolog, Cobol, Fortran and assembly all have a profound learning value, not because they were textual, but because of the concepts they enable you to learn. At the universities we recruit from, they don't teach only Java. I think Java is a great learning language, and I think LabVIEW is a great learning language.
Greg McKaskle
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