Programming languages

[STUART]

Do you have a language or environment preference for software development?

[prowe]

Forgot one, Agilent VEE ! Much like Labview but much nicer.. Woods Hole uses it for Alvin and all their ship data capture programs.
Good stuff, it will be interesting to see how the vote goes?
pr/.

[ag.videoray]

Patrick,

Thanks!

There can only be 10 items on the poll. But I bumped APL...

I tend to think that stuff like VEE, Labview, Matlab etc. have pretty high barriers to entry. All are expensive, esp. compared with free compilers like GNU or the Microsoft express editions. It also seems easier to find programmers for the more conventional languages.

Of course all the the other environments usually have some method of linking to libraries from more traditional tools, so maybe it's not so big an issue.

I'd be curious as to how WHOI choose on VEE? Usually there tends to be one champion, and then they are historically locked in.

For anyone interested here is some agilent marketing material on WHOI's usage.

http://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb ... 1215EN.pdf

-a

[smithdwsn]

I think PHP programming language is the best option because it is open source technology. You can easily understand and no high level configuration needed for it. It is faster,ease to learn, effective and flexible programming language. It is the best option for web based application.

[ag.videoray]

smithdwsn,

Thanks for the input!

I tend to think of PHP as a language more suitable for web based applications (like blogging, CMS, forms processing, etc.) than a robot control app. But perhaps I need to reconsider my opinion. Also, often our systems are used unconnected from the internet so a web based application may not be viable.

Did you have a specific application in mind or are you just a general fan of PHP?

PHP does have libraries for native serial port access. So It would be pretty easy to directly control the ROV from PHP by writing to the raw communication protocol. Using the entire current SDK would be a bit tough at this point as there would have to be some sort of interop layer. PHP can use COM so it would be theoretically possible to expose a lot of the SDK classes as COM objects.

There are other alternatives to writing to the raw communications protocol or directly using the sdk. Depending upon your goals just using some of the in built data exchange protocols may be all that is needed to use PHP in a useful way.

-a

[Gerry.Newcastle]

Hey,

I think going for something such as C or C++ is an excellent idea, it allows a wide range of people to get involved and try producing something themselves without great expense. I also feel this sort of environment is easily available with free compilers available and the express versions of the visual suite easy to use and get started with. Although the likes of labview and matlab are great pieces of software to use, they are expensive to get going with and thus might not be so open to everyone.

I think everyone will have there own choice of favourite language and it will hard to meet everyones first choice, but i think the key is to go for something easily available.

Cheers

Gerry