What do you use to program your robot?

[JABot67]

There have been multiple threads on this topic, but oh well.

Team 67 uses both C++ and LabVIEW. Our programming team was so big this year (10 members) that we decided to split up into C++ and LabVIEW teams. The idea was that both teams would program the robot to work in the same way, and at the end of the build season, we would decide which one was better. When I was told I was to be the senior LabVIEW programmer for the HOT Team, I was sure we were going to end up using C++, because I had no experience with LabVIEW and our head C++ programmer is very good.

But 6 weeks later, after I had taught myself LabVIEW and learned to love it, the team decided that both programming environments were completely functional and worked at exactly the same level. We decided to use LabVIEW at one district event and C++ at the other, and then use whichever one worked better for the State Championship and Atlanta. We used LabVIEW at Kettering, winning the event. The one time that our robot scored 3 balls in auton from the far zone (qf1-2) was the greatest, most exciting moment of my robotics career.

We used C++ at the Detroit District, where we worked all Friday trying to get the robot to hang. Our arm potentiometer malfunctioned Friday afternoon, and that caused a bug in our C++ code where we weren't able to kick. We played one match without kicking at all, and then switched to LabVIEW for 3 matches while our C++ programmers figured out the problem. If it weren't for our ability to use two completely different programs to run our robot, we would not have seeded #1 at Detroit, and perhaps wouldn't have won.

For the State Championship, we had no idea which program to use. In fact, the decision was made at around 10:00 on Thursday that we would use LabVIEW for States and C++ at Atlanta.

One interesting thing is that the HOTBOT is completely student-programmed this year. Us students had to fend for ourselves after two really great mentors, Dave Doerr (C++) and Bob VanHam (LabVIEW) left the team this year. Our programming mentors, Dave Verbrugge and Theresa Prior, told us at the beginning of the season that the would not able to help us program in the pits. (Dave is MCing at every competition we are going to!)

Has any other team tried to use more than 1 programming environment?