Who to Choosing Between programming language?

[Rosiebotboss]

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

Rosie's programming mentor uses Labview every day in his job and teached programming at a local University at night. Hence our student programmers are VERY proficient with LabView.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

This.

[yara92]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

Rosie's programming mentor uses Labview every day in his job and teached programming at a local University at night. Hence our student programmers are VERY proficient with LabView.

The equation is more complicate than what does the mentor know, I am locking for FRC as it is the First step for the kids for the future and continuo their academic studies.
Secondly my team 75% is smart girls, I always telling them for me in Science there is no compromise like or dislike. There is advantage and disadvantage then you need to weigh the pros and cons.

[mathking]

I think JamesBrown nicely summarized the pros and cons of the languages. I will add an observation of my own: Any students interested in programming as a career will learn C++ and Java in college. But they might not learn LabView or another language and development environment like it, so there is some advantage to using LabView from that perspective.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

What language does your programming mentor have the most experience with? That's the language you should use.

I don't think it's that simple.

I had no real experience with LabVIEW when it became an option. I chose to focus on it partly because of that. I didn't keep falling into the trap of wanting to do things myself because I could do it faster. Now that I do have plenty of LabVIEW experience, it's still a good language to use for our team, because I find it easier to explain a programming concept using dataflow and diagrams instead of procedures and text-based syntax.


If we had a large number of active programming students and wanted to do some sort of distributed programming effort, I'd pick C++ without hesitation. So far as I can tell, LabVIEW doesn't yet have the kind of support for fine-grained version control that is the norm for text-based languages.

[Mike Betts]

Mohamed,

While I very seldom disagree with Dana Henry, I have to side with Alan on the mentor experience issue. Most professional software engineers can change languages with ease. I have lost count on how many languages I have used (over 14) in my career. Also, most of us enjoy a challenge...

James Brown did a very good job of explaining things. However, I would emphasize the support in Labview. Most importantly, the fantastic video tutorials that Ben Zimmer has provided on FRCMastery.com. If your team is mentor poor or, for some other reason, you need the students to learn on their own, Labview is my top recommendation.

That being said, I will be pushing my team into Java this next year as it will better prepare them for AP testing and college.

Disclaimer: My comments above concern the existing choices... I have tried to keep an open mind about things but I still feel that FIRST did not do us any favors in the migration to an overly complex system to control a simple embedded system like a FRC robot.

JMHO,

Mike

[reuven]

Mohamed .

first of all i hope you had a good holiday today (i'm an Israeli too as you can see)
in this side of the FIRST world most of the teams use LV. so i think that this is the one you should use.
think that while you have any problem in the season it woulds be easier to call one of the teams in Israel then to wait for an answer from a team in the US.

[staplemonx]

We are going to let our kids decide between C++ or Java. we are going to make Java as appealing as possible becuase we can have them learn it by building android apps over the summer. That way by the time the fall comes around writting jave for the robot will seam like a breeze.

But if they choose C++, anyone have any fun tasks that the kids could do that will teach them without them knowing it?

[mathking]

I don't have any simple, fun C++ tasks for kids to do on their own, but I have another for Java: Robocode. It is a great way to learn Java programming while you program virtual robots. It is free and cross-platform as well.
http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

Alan highlights another important thing to consider: version control. If you are going to have multiple programmers working on the code for the robot, version control is very nice to have. I will disagree a little with Alan, in that I actually find that in general the version control systems I have seen for Java are easier to learn than for C++, but there are many good options for both. In fact, the ones we have used will work for either language equally well.

[sanddrag]

I'm not a programmer, but I do consider myself very computer literate and I've done limited programming in LabView, Java, PBASIC, and Matlab. I must say, of them all, LabView was the most frustrating for me to use.

[OSU_Springer]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I'm not a programmer, but I do consider myself very computer literate and I've done limited programming in LabView, Java, PBASIC, and Matlab. I must say, of them all, LabView was the most frustrating for me to use.

I would agree that Labview can be frustrating. However, NI has gone through significant pains to make it very easy to use for FIRST. I would recommend Labview because it is the easiest (in my opinion) to teach to students, as well as for them to troubleshoot. I am going out on a limb thinking that there are probably more visual learners out there than any other. Labview is ideal for this group.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I'm not a programmer, but I do consider myself very computer literate and I've done limited programming in LabView, Java, PBASIC, and Matlab. I must say, of them all, LabView was the most frustrating for me to use.

LabVIEW is the only one in your list that isn't a "traditional" procedural language. It makes sense that you'd find it the hardest to work with based on limited exposure.

I too had a frustrating introduction to LabVIEW. My instructor was a wizard at dataflow programming, and showed me things so quickly that I never had a chance to understand the underlying nature of what was going on. Later, after I had gone through a well-done series of tutorials -- and after I had let go of much of what I thought a programming language "needed" to be -- everything was much easier to understand.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by reuven

think that while you have any problem in the season it woulds be easier to call one of the teams in Israel then to wait for an answer from a team in the US.

The world is flat. During the build season there is very little waiting to get a detailed expert answer on CD.

[reuven]

Originally Posted by Ether

The world is flat. During the build season there is very little waiting to get a detailed expert answer on CD.

as a programmer, its faster to me to take the phone and to call to someone here (how also speak my language) then to try describe it in English, and wait 6-7 hours to an answer (usually when i write here u all asleep in the US).

[Ether]

Originally Posted by reuven

as a programmer, its faster to me to take the phone and to call to someone here (how also speak my language) then to try describe it in English, and wait 6-7 hours to an answer (usually when i write here u all asleep in the US).

If language is the primary barrier I would agree, although your English does seem adequate for the task, and folks here at CD are generally very patient and helpful when dealing with non-native English. But the time zone argument doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, given the wide range of hours that CDers monitor the forums and the fact that the US covers 3 time zones.