Quote:
Originally Posted by jkoritzinsky
Real time is important for building a robot, but the really nice thing about managed runtimes is the memory management (which I must admit C++ does well if you have access to a library that correctly uses smart pointers, which WPILib does not). Also, we have already somewhat passed by the real-time requirement with the use Java. Additionally, C# has a number of language features that simplify writing code.
If people want to focus on real-time exclusively and want to avoid managed code (which I would understand) then they still have that choice with C++.
This library/runtime would give teams more choices as to what languages to use (specifically, every CLS compliant language that can run on Mono).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thad House
Also, for FRC, C# and java are actually fairly close, and I would much rather have them work on just one language then split over 2.
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I strongly agree that supporting more languages simply to provide more choices is not a great idea for FRC. Stretching our support resources thinner to gain variety will not work in our favor.
It makes sense to support additional languages which provide unique features allowing teams to select a language that is at an appropriate level for their available expertise and their intended capabilities. However, adding what might be called redundant languages (eg. C# when Java is already supported) simply spreads the support to more tasks. This usually results in less consistent performance and reduced reliability.
It seems like the 3 languages currently supported provide a good variation in capabilities and features to make an appropriate choice available for every team.