Starting programming...

[kenavt]

Over the past couple of years, I have really been interested in getting started with programming, but I was usually too busy with some other extracurricular activities or school. Then, this year, I joined my school's FRC team, and I am really into robotics. This year, I was in charge of the layout and execution of the wiring on the robot. Next year, I want to help program.

With this goal in mind, I was wondering: what do you think would be the best way to get started into programming in general? I have had minor, minor experienced with C++* and a little bit more with LabVIEW** (which is what we use). However, I really want to take part of this summer to really get my fingers into programming, with the intent of being a help on the programming side to the team next year.

I don't really know where to start. I've looked through some of the official FRC documentation on LabVIEW, and that's about it. I'm sure you guys get asked this question a lot, so what should I do to start out?

*Wrote a program to randomly generate an integer using randl;, then user guesses the number and the program outputs how close you are (within 5, 10, 20, or outside 20).

**Wrote same program as above except using LEDs and indicators in LabVIEW, plus I hung out with our main programmer as much as possible so I picked up a couple of things.