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What is the best language for controls and embedded, in your opinion? I assume from your comment that it's not a great choice as a first language to teach newbi

by rmunn 2mo ago

What is the best language for controls and embedded, in your opinion? I assume from your comment that it's not a great choice as a first language to teach newbies, but I've never done anything in the field of robotics or embedded stuff, so I'm quite ignorant in that area.

YuechenLi 2mo ago
If I'm not allowed to toot my own horn, I think for controls, you probably should not start with choosing a programming language, the first step is learning control theory and automata theory, you kinda have to understand feedback control/PID/steady state/jitter/hysteresis and the like. Python has never had great control libraries to begin with as far as I can remember (my info could be a bit outdated though), so the paid option is still Matlab/Simulink as it is their last niche really. Embedded firmware, probably C/C++/Rust. Not the answer you want to hear, but these are the languages for bare metal applications. Of course, if you are just using an Arduino/Pi, just use their SDK for their hardware on whichever language they support. Those two fields are just not very friendly towards beginners in general.
- Waterluvian 2mo ago
  Yeah! Like when helping teens set up PID controllers for their CAN-bussed robot, it was very much a "we've got a lot of example working Java code with a PID Controller library already. So we're using that." The language itself is so inconsequential at the early stage, that you really just pick whatever gets in your way the least.
- rmunn 2mo ago
  Please do toot your own horn. I assume you're referring to https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct — tell us why it's good.
  - YuechenLi 2mo ago
    Sure, short list: - Easier to write than Python other than the simplest script, almost no way to write bad code and have it compile, reads like pseudocode most of the time - Compiles into Go binary, runs at Go speed, compiles at Go speed - Trivial to wrap any Go library via LLMs, so any Go library is also an Oct library. - Can metaprogram existing Go codebases, so it doesn't really replace Go, just supplements it - Easy concurrency/parallelism - SI units as types - Can be used as build script for C/C++ in place of CMake - Einstein tensor notation - Builtin GPU acceleration via Vulkan It was designed as a teaching language for academics to stop writing bad code, but now I just get LLMs to do research/science for me with it for fun.
Waterluvian 2mo ago
None of them. Walks away. Stops. Turns. All of them. It depends. If you're a teen I'm mentoring, you're probably starting with some Scratch to drive Lego robots around. Then on to Python to drive the same robots around but now with more fun!. Probably because you absolutely couldn't stand the standard line follower solution of jittering back and forth and you sniffed out the existence of better control loops you cannot realize in Scratch. If you're on the FIRST Robotics team you're probably doing Java or Python, mainly because that's just what we've geared up for (and this is really the core theme for me at least: at introductory levels, what really matters most is whatever is most readily accessible to you and whatever kit you already have). If you're doing your own stuff and you're a newbie with absolutely no opinions on where you started or what you were trying to do, you'd probably start poking around with an Arduino or similar, so you could write MicroPython (it's Python but you squint your eyes a bit!) or C. There's so many great kits for beginners. In the context of my comment: what I meant is that you wouldn't decide, "the professionals do it in C++, C, or Rust, so we'll start with one of those." I'm going to give you a recorder (Python) before I hand you bagpipes (C++).
- rmunn 2mo ago
  If I'm teaching you programming and you've learned Scratch, I'm going to hand you Snap! (https://snap.berkeley.edu/ https://snap.berkeley.edu/) next. Because it's Scratch, but with the artificial limiters removed. Snap! (the exclamation mark is part of the name) allows you to store lists in variables and pass them as inputs to functions, and it has the standard list-handling functions you'd expect, like filter and map. Moreover, it also allows you to store blocks (functions, basically) in data structures and pass them as inputs to other blocks, so you can actually learn to write code in functional-programming style. Once you learn that Brian Harvey, one of the two main designers of Snap!, was one of the principle people behind Berkeley Logo (which itself was a variant of Lisp, though that wasn't clear to me when I was learning Logo at age eight), it all starts to become clear. Snap! is itself nearly a Lisp, just lacking macros (and Brian Harvey is trying to figure out how to add a macro system to Snap!, with the primary challenge being making it comprehensible in graphical-blocks form).
  - 2mo ago

by rmunn 2mo ago

YuechenLi 2mo ago

If I'm not allowed to toot my own horn, I think for controls, you probably should not start with choosing a programming language, the first step is learning control theory and automata theory, you kinda have to understand feedback control/PID/steady state/jitter/hysteresis and the like. Python has never had great control libraries to begin with as far as I can remember (my info could be a bit outdated though), so the paid option is still Matlab/Simulink as it is their last niche really. Embedded firmware, probably C/C++/Rust. Not the answer you want to hear, but these are the languages for bare metal applications. Of course, if you are just using an Arduino/Pi, just use their SDK for their hardware on whichever language they support. Those two fields are just not very friendly towards beginners in general.

Waterluvian 2mo ago
Yeah! Like when helping teens set up PID controllers for their CAN-bussed robot, it was very much a "we've got a lot of example working Java code with a PID Controller library already. So we're using that." The language itself is so inconsequential at the early stage, that you really just pick whatever gets in your way the least.
rmunn 2mo ago
Please do toot your own horn. I assume you're referring to https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct — tell us why it's good.
- YuechenLi 2mo ago
  Sure, short list: - Easier to write than Python other than the simplest script, almost no way to write bad code and have it compile, reads like pseudocode most of the time - Compiles into Go binary, runs at Go speed, compiles at Go speed - Trivial to wrap any Go library via LLMs, so any Go library is also an Oct library. - Can metaprogram existing Go codebases, so it doesn't really replace Go, just supplements it - Easy concurrency/parallelism - SI units as types - Can be used as build script for C/C++ in place of CMake - Einstein tensor notation - Builtin GPU acceleration via Vulkan It was designed as a teaching language for academics to stop writing bad code, but now I just get LLMs to do research/science for me with it for fun.

Waterluvian 2mo ago

None of them. Walks away. Stops. Turns. All of them. It depends. If you're a teen I'm mentoring, you're probably starting with some Scratch to drive Lego robots around. Then on to Python to drive the same robots around but now with more fun!. Probably because you absolutely couldn't stand the standard line follower solution of jittering back and forth and you sniffed out the existence of better control loops you cannot realize in Scratch. If you're on the FIRST Robotics team you're probably doing Java or Python, mainly because that's just what we've geared up for (and this is really the core theme for me at least: at introductory levels, what really matters most is whatever is most readily accessible to you and whatever kit you already have). If you're doing your own stuff and you're a newbie with absolutely no opinions on where you started or what you were trying to do, you'd probably start poking around with an Arduino or similar, so you could write MicroPython (it's Python but you squint your eyes a bit!) or C. There's so many great kits for beginners. In the context of my comment: what I meant is that you wouldn't decide, "the professionals do it in C++, C, or Rust, so we'll start with one of those." I'm going to give you a recorder (Python) before I hand you bagpipes (C++).

rmunn 2mo ago
If I'm teaching you programming and you've learned Scratch, I'm going to hand you Snap! (https://snap.berkeley.edu/ https://snap.berkeley.edu/) next. Because it's Scratch, but with the artificial limiters removed. Snap! (the exclamation mark is part of the name) allows you to store lists in variables and pass them as inputs to functions, and it has the standard list-handling functions you'd expect, like filter and map. Moreover, it also allows you to store blocks (functions, basically) in data structures and pass them as inputs to other blocks, so you can actually learn to write code in functional-programming style. Once you learn that Brian Harvey, one of the two main designers of Snap!, was one of the principle people behind Berkeley Logo (which itself was a variant of Lisp, though that wasn't clear to me when I was learning Logo at age eight), it all starts to become clear. Snap! is itself nearly a Lisp, just lacking macros (and Brian Harvey is trying to figure out how to add a macro system to Snap!, with the primary challenge being making it comprehensible in graphical-blocks form).
- 2mo ago