2015 C++ Programming Environment

[Ken P.]

Question:

1. Should I have the kids learn Java instead or C++? I have 20yrs+ of C++ experience. However, if FRC support for C++ is weaker than that for Java then I want to have the kids go with Java.


Cheers,
Ken

[NotInControl]

FRC support is the same for Java and C++ in 2015, since you have experience in C++, I recommend that be your first choice.

Both languages will be using the eclipse IDE for FRC development.

Regards,
Kevin

[wireties]

Many teams use C++, including FIRST Team 1296. We made the choice of C++ for the same reason - we had mentors who knew C++. There are ups and downs to any choice but in my opinion going with something the adults can help with makes the most sense.

HTH

[Alan Anderson]

I'd like to give a counterpoint to the "go with what the mentors know" idea. The TechnoKats went with LabVIEW the first year of the cRIO, mostly because nobody had much experience with it. It meant that the software group that year was a real mentor/student collaboration rather than a classroom-style learning environment. It turned out great.

We've discovered that LabVIEW works well in a group-programming environment, with students able to get a feel for the workings of a piece of code without having to concentrate on reading it the way a text-based language requires. That's why we stick with it even though I now have a lot of experience with it.

[MrRoboSteve]

There are tradeoffs in all of the language systems, but helping at competitions I rarely see practical limitations due to language choice I do deal with more LabView programming problems than other languages at competitions, but that is because newer teams tend to select it, not because LabView is innately bad.

I'm like Alan background-wise, and migrated our team to C++ primarily because I didn't have time to learn/teach LabView in the first year I was involved. We have a good training program for teaching kids the basics of C++ -- there's a lot of the language that you don't need to know.

If you're just starting out with mentoring FRC programming, have no experience with WPILib, know one of the languages, and your team doesn't have a preference, then I'd go with the language you know. It's one fewer thing to learn during the build season.

[NotInControl]

In the end, you can try any and all languages in the off season to see which one best suits your needs individually and as a team.

At the end of the day, they all can program the control system the same in 2015.

We started using Labview when the cRIO launched. 3 years after we switched to Java. The reason we switched to Java was because our students were having trouble understanding visual programming, and conflicting with the text based programming class they were learning in school. Other reasons was there was no clean way to do cloud based source control (at the time) as compared to text base languages. And we didn't fully understand how to collaborate in parallel development using labview.

So we looked to C++ and Java. The reason we chose Java over C++ was simple. Java is what is currently being taught as a first language in most universities today. (When I was a freshman it was C++). So because we want to give our students a leg up for college, we choose to go Java and have been using Java since 2012. We also have very dedicated mentors on our team who were willing to learn the ins and outs of each language and teach the students. This is a huge advantage, but if you do not have this on your team, and the students are left to learn some or most of the language programming constructs on their own, I believe there are more text based programming resources available online for Java and C++ then there are with Labview outside of cheifdelphi in general.

When switching we had doubts that Java would be slower or use up more resources than C++ and for that reason we thought C++ was the clear choice. However, we did our own comparisons between the performance of both languages and our tests showed that the differences were ignorable/tolerable and performance was not punished by the JVM. As a Alpha/Beta tester of the 2015 control system, this continues to be true for the new control system.

In the end, try them all, they can all do everything you need for FRC. It is just user preference, and we cant tell you what is best for you and your students. For us the students more quickly grasped text based languages after switching from labview, it aligned more with their current school programming course, better support of Github for source control, and being that Java is the number 1 taught language in universities for incoming college freshman's at the moment, are all part of why we choose the way we did.

You will find teams on chief using all 3 languages very successfully for many years. I suggest make selection criteria that is important to you to help choose which language is best. But also let the kids give it a whirl and see which language they find easier as a whole when creating a simple tank drive robot example from scratch.

Regards,
Kevin