Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
I hope to god it's not Java-based.
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To argue the flip-side of it... I disagree entirely. I think Java could be a very interesting choice.
I'll admit that I am biased - Java is about 70% of what I do for a living. However, I also had the opportunity this past week at JavaOne (Sun's annual developers' conference) to get some coding time on Java-powered robots and found the code base they were using - Java Micro Edition - to be easy to work with and fairly streamlined when it came to handling commands. I think it would certainly introduce a different level of challenge with a language transition, but I don't think that there ought to be an automatic concern that "Java is too bloated" to work. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Furthermore, it's not like Java is not being taught in the schools anyway - in many schools, it's taking over from C as the language of instruction, and the AP exam in Computer Science now covers it.
That all being said, I think that while I would certainly welcome the use of Java in FIRST, there needs to be some serious consideration given to the amount of code and experience that would be left behind that first year after a change.