2009 season question

[JJD]

Our team was a bit shorthanded when it came to programming. While the 2-3 people who knew it, got the job done, it'd always be better to have more people to bounce ideas off of.

Keeping that in mind, I am going to try to learn a little bit over the summer, but with the new control interface is the programming going to change from C? Does anyone know yet?

Thanks

[whytheheckme]

The controller next year will be programmable in LabView, with C support available (according to the announcment at championships). While C will be supported, it will be much much less powerful than coding in LabView.

Welcome to ChiefDelphi! Just so you know, please search before posting. This has been covered in numerous threads (thanks in advance )

-Jacob

[Greg McKaskle]

To offer up a little different summary of the previous programming discussions.

The languages available for teams to use will be C/C++ and LV. They will both be quite powerful, pretty much on par with each other. Both development environments will support wireless source level debugging and some other high level tools, and both will support a new edition of the WPI robotics libraries that are being open sourced.

Greg McKaskle

[jtdowney]

Originally Posted by whytheheckme

While C will be supported, it will be much much less powerful than coding in LabView.

I have to disagree with Jacob and reinforce what Greg posted, everything I've heard said they've made considerable effort to ensure both platforms will be equally as powerful and that you will have a C interface to LabVIEWs libraries (image processing and such).

Now it would be hard for us to say whether switching your team to LabVIEW would be a worth it. As many have said on this forum, some people pick up the LabVIEW language quicker then others. So I would present both and let your programmers decide, either way you will always find plenty of help here.

[slavik262]

At the risk of being redundant, I'd like to reinforce this. Not only will the controller be programmable in C, but C++, which is basically C with additional features (such as object oriented programming and templates). C++ will open many new doors combined with WPILib, and should be just as powerful as LabVIEW

[JJD]

If i decide to learn C++ and my team sticks with C, will I still be able to help out on coding? I hear they're very similar, but not sure how similar.

[Greg McKaskle]

C++ is highly compatible with C. It is souped-up, with extensions including object oriented support, generic templates, default parameters, and operator overloading. A single project can contain both C(.c) and C++(.cpp) files, and can share header(.h) files.

Greg McKaskle

[slavik262]

Basically everything that can possibly be done in C can also be done in C++. And teaching somebody C++ after they know C isn't hard. Syntax is the seme, and you're basically just teaching them a few new structures. I've found a great tutorial for doing so is learncpp.com.

[JJD]

Thanks for all your help guys! Hoping to learn enough by next season to add an asset to 2225! See you guys in MN(and maybe WI) next season.