Which language should we program in

[gixxy]

Due to the libraries already being written for us it is all a matter of what you may know, and what you are comfortable with.

Labview is quick to learn and a visual language. Its more connect the dots to control the robot. However it is High Level and that can cause a decreased performance. (I believe Labview is fully interpreted. Please correct me if I am wrong)

Java is FULLY Object Oriented and has things built in like Garbage Collection (to automatically remove objects that are no longer needed), and this does make for a simplified learning experience with text programming languages. Java is also high level, but at least is compiled to byte code so it has a little more speed)

C++ is a lot more manual, you allocate yourself, you setup the objects and de-allocate them yourself, you have pointers, and so there is a lot more room for mistakes. However it will be the fastest running code, being that it is straight machine code for the cRio's PowerPC CPU.

Python is only supported by individual teams and I do not know how user friendly it is, I have next to no experience with it, however I do know that it is fully interpreted and that COULD cause some performance issues if you are going a lot of automated stuff.

Personally I think none of them are hard to learn (then again I was writing PHP at 13 and some Java at 15) There are tons of videos on all of them as well as books and other aids.



We chose Java because I had a little experience with it and the others on the Programming team felt they had enough confidence to do it, and boy it worked out for us!