C or LabVIEW: CompactRIO

[Tom Line]

I will be using C. I will also modify whichever WPILIB's we use to work the way WE program.

Generally speaking, if you know how to program, any time you add an additional layer of abstraction between you and your robot it is a bad thing. It creates issues (look up the disable to auton switchover that created issues because it went through teleop using an additional layer of abstraction).

In addition, Labview is not a common environment. I understand that it's used - but C is MUCH more widely used and will serve the students better in the future. I'd rather they have a good grasp of programming so they can actually fix problems they run into later rather than having someone else write them a new labview library that functions.

Both have their uses. As far as I'm concerned, Labview is very nice for data acquisition - because as someone said you can grab your sensor module library and plug it in and read your thermocouple temperature, etc. That's not something that's as easy in C. However, it is not for programming complex robotics, no matter how much playing you do with it. Even in industrial applications (we have a large number of test stations in our plant) they use C and underlying ladder logic and rely on Labview for data acquistion. Not control.