"Java, Sun SPOT and the FIRST Robotics Competition"

[Greg McKaskle]

Originally Posted by j_johnson

I it will be much easier to reprogram and test without the 30 second start up time.

This has been mentioned a few times. Can you elaborate on what the 30 second sequence is, and when it becomes a big part of the development cycle?

One mentor came by the booth and wasn't aware of the three button reboot, so they were power cycling the entire robot each time they deployed. Is this a similar situation? Or are you unable to simply reboot the controller? Or is your controller taking 30 seconds to reboot?

Greg McKaskle

[Bomberofdoom]

Hang on, let me get this straight....

Is Labview still available to teams to program the robot?

Is it that Java is replacing Labview or we're just gonna' have a 3rd programming language available?

[davidalln]

Originally Posted by Bomberofdoom

Hang on, let me get this straight....

Is Labview still available to teams to program the robot?

Is it that Java is replacing Labview or we're just gonna' have a 3rd programming language available?

I believe Java is another option for teams, along with LabVIEW and C++.

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by davidalln

I believe Java is another option for teams, along with LabVIEW and C++.

Correct. They are adding an option, not replacing them.

However, at one of the feedback sessions they did mention considering dropping C (not C++, just C) support: Only one team reported using it, and they were planning to move away from it any way.

[Dave Flowerday]

It'll be interesting to see what happens here since Sun is now being bought out:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/16340...n_for_74b.html

Whenever a new owner comes in, a lot of old projects within a company being bought out can get axed rather suddenly. Hopefully this isn't one of them.

[lynca]

Originally Posted by lingomaniac88

I think this move will attract a lot of people, especially in schools that offer computer science courses in Java. There are probably quite a number of them, too, since AP Computer Science works in Java.

I concur, the majority of AP and IB schools teach computer science in Java.

[gblake]

Wow - This dovetails very nicely with the Java client I have been developing for the 5th Gear FRC robotics simulator - That Java client replaces human players with computer control of one or more of the simulation's virtual robots - Blake

[rogerlsmith]

I think it's great to offer alternative platforms for development. With that said, I think Sun and or WPI will need to offer some good examples in Java before it will really catch on in our community.

[davidalln]

I also hope that they release it before fall like their website says. Or at least release it in beta stages (they obviously have somewhat of an alpha product as they had a robot running on Java at CMP).

It was reasonable for NI and WPI/WindRiver to release their programs and languages in the fall because nobody had the cRIO until then. But now that teams have a cRIO, they can beta and submit patches or feedback during practice in the summer.

[mathking]

As a teacher of AP and IB computer science and an FRC advisor, I like this opportunity a lot. It will make the learning curve for new programmers much less steep on the average, since the overwhelming majority of high school CS classes are Java based. While there are things I don't like about it, the way Java handles events and exceptions will make robot programming much easier for students to pick up. In particular this should be a good avenue for making sensors more easily used.