Sending data to cRIO

[mikegrundvig]

C++ was the language the students wanted as they picked it last year and it worked for em. There are two differences to last year though - they had one student on the team who was OK at C++ and the robot code was vastly simpler. They have no C++ mentors that have shown up regularly and while I'm actually a good programmer, I don't know C++ goop well enough to help significantly.

Is there no member of the team that could just pick up another language by reading references? C++ is a terrible language to learn how to program, as it has way too many concepts enrolled into 1 (really 2 languages into 1, if you think about it). On top of that, the C++ already code is not portable to the cRIO.. so you're getting even less support with that...

I agree, I think learning C++ by the seat of their pants is a nasty problem. I'm going to appear one last time to get things working in Java. Porting the robot code they've done thus far to Java would be a trivial exercise we could complete in under an hour. Add to it how many advantages we'd get with all the built-in libraries and available online examples, it seems like a no-brainer solution.

Just took a look at the C++ references (stupid chm files.. gotta find a viewer lol) and it seems your options is fairly limited.. existing C++ code probably won't work for you either.

Yeah, not too much is there? All of that appears readily available in Java as well. Then we also get micro-edition abilities to boot. I've had a lot of trouble getting details on what the OS itself of the cRIO gives us for c/c++ options. This makes porting code from say an Apache library over to the cRIO very scary.

Also, are you a mentor on the team?

Yup, so beyond suggestions and some guidance, it's their decision. Thanks!

-Mike