Seeking advice for rookie programming

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

This is not quite right - java is actually pass-by-value; when passing objects it passes the value of the reference (not the reference itself!). If you reassign a passed parameter in a java subroutine, it will not change anything outside of the subroutine.

(I've heard some object to this by arguing that it is indeed pass-by-reference, but variable assignment in java is best interpreted as name-binding. But this is not how the language specification describes it.)

Yeah, I think every Java fan I've ever talked to has insisted that the language is pass by value but the fact that for objects you can only ever have mutable references to them means that all the benefits you'd expect to get with pass by value semantics are effectively destroyed.

[phurley67]

Hint: Programmers like to argue about their favorite languages :-)

On our team our mentors (myself included) prefer C++ as a language; however, our FTC feeder system (in Michigan FTC is generally a middle school program) is now in Java and our high school AP Programming class is taught in Java. Based primarily on these two factors we (the mentors) supported the idea of using Java even though it is not our personal favorite programming language. Prior to that we had been using LabVIEW which, while I will admit I never grew to love, I least felt I had a pretty good understanding -- but we never found it easy to create work flow that supported 10+ programmers without more discipline than we were able to maintain with high school students during build.

I would suggest writing up a pro and con for each language. Keep in mind your primary goals -- different teams can easily have different goals. For us it was choosing a language which will allow us to engage the most students (we have a large programming sub-group) and field a competitive robot. Other teams may want to prioritize the learning of only one or two programmers and they are personally going to get more out of using C++ or Python -- there is no one perfect answer.