Who to Choosing Between programming language?

[yara92]

Choosing Between programming language
Which reasons for choosing on programming language over the other? Choosing Between C++ and Java or LabVeiw.]
My Question is which parameter I should concern for choosing the programming language such as : Friendly to use; simplest; etc..

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by yara92

Choosing Between programming language
Which reasons for choosing on programming language over the other? Choosing Between C++ and Java or LabVeiw.]
My Question is which parameter I should concern for choosing the programming language such as : Friendly to use; simplest; etc..

Mohamed,

I would recommend using whatever language your team members (students and mentors) have the most experience with. All three languages are equally capable and more powerful than necessary for FRC. If your experience is roughly equal in all languages then here are some of the benefits of each to consider.

C++: C and its variations are the most common languages used in industry and academics today. Applications for C++ range from embedded software through high level applications programming. Learning C++ would likely give students an advantage if they pursue engineering at university.

Java: Java is similar in complexity to C++. It has the advantage of being platform independent (meaning that code you write for one operating system should work on a Java VM for any operating system. Java is not as popular in industry as C/C++ but it is still used. In the US Java is the most popular language for High School students to learn because it is used on the Advanced Placement test for college credit. Learning to program in Java makes it a lot easier to learn to program in C++ later, most of the skills are transferable between the two languages.

LabVIEW: LV is a much more application specific language. There are plenty of companies that use LV but there are even more that don't. LV is fast and powerful and National Instruments provides fantastic support. In my opinion LV is the fastest and easiest way to get a robot programmed, if those are the most important things to you I strongly recommend LV.

In general I would say that you can pretty much flip a coin between Java and C++. I think the bigger decision is whether you want to use LabView or one of the traditional languages (Java/C++). I think LabView is the easiest to learn and get started with but I think that there is great value in teaching students one of the other languages. The skills learned using Java and C++ are easily transferred to other languages later. These same skills can be learned using LabView but because of LabView's graphical nature it is much easier to get away with poor coding practices.

Over all there is no one right answer, as a team you need to weigh the pros and cons of each language and decide what is best for you.

[Rosiebotboss]

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

Rosie's programming mentor uses Labview every day in his job and teached programming at a local University at night. Hence our student programmers are VERY proficient with LabView.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

This.

[yara92]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

Rosie's programming mentor uses Labview every day in his job and teached programming at a local University at night. Hence our student programmers are VERY proficient with LabView.

The equation is more complicate than what does the mentor know, I am locking for FRC as it is the First step for the kids for the future and continuo their academic studies.
Secondly my team 75% is smart girls, I always telling them for me in Science there is no compromise like or dislike. There is advantage and disadvantage then you need to weigh the pros and cons.

[mathking]

I think JamesBrown nicely summarized the pros and cons of the languages. I will add an observation of my own: Any students interested in programming as a career will learn C++ and Java in college. But they might not learn LabView or another language and development environment like it, so there is some advantage to using LabView from that perspective.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

I don't think it's that simple.

I had no real experience with LabVIEW when it became an option. I chose to focus on it partly because of that. I didn't keep falling into the trap of wanting to do things myself because I could do it faster. Now that I do have plenty of LabVIEW experience, it's still a good language to use for our team, because I find it easier to explain a programming concept using dataflow and diagrams instead of procedures and text-based syntax.


If we had a large number of active programming students and wanted to do some sort of distributed programming effort, I'd pick C++ without hesitation. So far as I can tell, LabVIEW doesn't yet have the kind of support for fine-grained version control that is the norm for text-based languages.

[Mike Betts]

Mohamed,

While I very seldom disagree with Dana Henry, I have to side with Alan on the mentor experience issue. Most professional software engineers can change languages with ease. I have lost count on how many languages I have used (over 14) in my career. Also, most of us enjoy a challenge...

James Brown did a very good job of explaining things. However, I would emphasize the support in Labview. Most importantly, the fantastic video tutorials that Ben Zimmer has provided on FRCMastery.com. If your team is mentor poor or, for some other reason, you need the students to learn on their own, Labview is my top recommendation.

That being said, I will be pushing my team into Java this next year as it will better prepare them for AP testing and college.

Disclaimer: My comments above concern the existing choices... I have tried to keep an open mind about things but I still feel that FIRST did not do us any favors in the migration to an overly complex system to control a simple embedded system like a FRC robot.

JMHO,

Mike

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by yara92

The equation is more complicate than what does the mentor know, I am locking for FRC as it is the First step for the kids for the future and continuo their academic studies.
Secondly my team 75% is smart girls, I always telling them for me in Science there is no compromise like or dislike. There is advantage and disadvantage then you need to weigh the pros and cons.

I have to disagree with Alan, if you have a software mentor who feels comfortable teaching certain languages you should probably go with those languages. If that mentor feels comfortable learning with the students or learning a new language then that opens up a new possibility.

As for which language is "best"... I can't answer that, I've used all 3 of these languages over the course of my college program. I can safely say that programming is akin to art. You have many different mediums but in the end you still wind up with a beautiful work. Learning a new language is just learning a new medium, they have their quirks and their own rules but the ability to visualize what you want is more important.

TL;DR - Software Engineering != coding.

[reuven]

Mohamed .

first of all i hope you had a good holiday today (i'm an Israeli too as you can see)
in this side of the FIRST world most of the teams use LV. so i think that this is the one you should use.
think that while you have any problem in the season it woulds be easier to call one of the teams in Israel then to wait for an answer from a team in the US.

[staplemonx]

We are going to let our kids decide between C++ or Java. we are going to make Java as appealing as possible becuase we can have them learn it by building android apps over the summer. That way by the time the fall comes around writting jave for the robot will seam like a breeze.

But if they choose C++, anyone have any fun tasks that the kids could do that will teach them without them knowing it?

[Ether]

Originally Posted by reuven

think that while you have any problem in the season it woulds be easier to call one of the teams in Israel then to wait for an answer from a team in the US.

The world is flat. During the build season there is very little waiting to get a detailed expert answer on CD.

[mathking]

I don't have any simple, fun C++ tasks for kids to do on their own, but I have another for Java: Robocode. It is a great way to learn Java programming while you program virtual robots. It is free and cross-platform as well.
http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

Alan highlights another important thing to consider: version control. If you are going to have multiple programmers working on the code for the robot, version control is very nice to have. I will disagree a little with Alan, in that I actually find that in general the version control systems I have seen for Java are easier to learn than for C++, but there are many good options for both. In fact, the ones we have used will work for either language equally well.

[sanddrag]

I'm not a programmer, but I do consider myself very computer literate and I've done limited programming in LabView, Java, PBASIC, and Matlab. I must say, of them all, LabView was the most frustrating for me to use.

[Nemo]

I would like to echo the idea that LabView is fast. Our programmers can produce working teleop code in 20 or 30 minutes in a pinch. Maybe it is similar in C++? I wouldn't know, because our team switched away from that before I signed on.