"Best" Programming Software for V5

#1

My team and I are wondering what is the best programing software to use for VEX v5. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

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#2

Hands down, VEXcode. You can learn more here:

Edit: It is free, like VCS, but is a bit better for competition use.

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#3

I used VCS for turning point, and it worked, but it was certainly not ideal. Personally I really like Robot Meshā€™s Studio. It has lotā€™s of templates for references and looks nice. Only issue is you need WiFi to use it.

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#4

The technical ā€œbestā€ is almost certainly PROS.

But the best for you will depend on many factors, such as your experience level and familiarity with the variety of language options (C++, Python, JavaScript, visual, etc.). So you will need to give us more information to go on.

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#5

Iā€™m going to vouch for PROS since it was developed for people who use it in competition. and is very versatile as well.

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#6

We released offline desktop and command line versions for Windows partway through last season, actually.

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#7

Oh. Then yeah, Robot Mesh is OP.

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#8

I like RMS for its versatility and features (many languages, has mimic which is basically RVW but better in most ways), and its good documentation.

I do use PROS though, for its power and libraries, as well as amazing documentation.

VexCode is decent, and is built solidly as a proper environment for those familiar with VCS. As for newcomers though, I have more difficulty recommending it.

VCS should never be used.

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#9

I am going to throw another vote in for PROS.

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#10

Iā€™ll go ahead and say that pros 3 is certainly my software of choice. On top of its flexibility and great documentation, itā€™s being a package for Atom gives the editor a lot of options for customization. It also has a few toys to play with that itā€™s competitors lack, such as LVGL and okapi-lib. Itā€™s certainly worth checking out.

That said, if you are looking for a software for beginners, do take a look at robot mesh studio. Though I havenā€™t used it myself, it has some features that make it very attractive for newer programmers.

Hope this helps! :ā€‹)

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#11

I found the documentation of PROS to be quite confusing, as I generally spend 30 minutes to an hour trying to figure out where something is, even with their APIā€™s search bar.
But yet again, I will admit that VCSā€™s API is so simplistic that they hide information behind other information making it be just as much time to find the resource you are looking for, despite straightforward articles.

C++ is pretty easy to learn the basics, but I really dont like how they use ā€œ>>ā€'s and other unnecessary symbols if you want to do more advanced things.
Also I never used lvgl before but at a first glance it looks so confusing.
I think PROS is the best, but not by a longshot compared to VEXcode and robotmesh as they solve different problems of the user.

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#12

I made the mistake of using VCS last year, it was pretty garbage. Though I canā€™t say anything about Robot Mesh Studio (I havenā€™t tried it), this year PROS has been pretty reliable and since it uses atom, you can add extensions.

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#13

John, correct me if Iā€™m wrongā€¦

I understand that VCS was a nice intro, but /very/ weighted on graphical coding - and terrible for github submissions, as it is binary.
VEXcode addresses the same toolchain, but textual (and open for github).
PROs is weighted toward universities and extended VEX far beyond competition needs.
RCS is weighted toward VEX competitions with support libraries, has an extra array of languages, good docs, and can take VCS/VEXcode almost as-is.

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#14

I canā€™t really say anything about VexCode since I havenā€™t used it. I completely agree about Robot Mesh Studio and PROS solving different issues. Our team is planning a programming class over the summer and Iā€™m pushing to get us to use Robot Mesh Studio for it. Itā€™s just better suited for that kind of thing.

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#15

Granted this wonā€™t give peoples reasons, but

  • RMS
  • VCS
  • VEXcode
  • PROS

0 voters

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#16

While things have changed a bit since I wrote this (mainly updates to improve PROS, and the release of VEXcode), this is still relevant as to why I think PROS is better than the other softwares (though it was mostly made as a case against VCS, and did not go into much depth with RMS).

Its not just a better option because of itā€™s earlier release and a more polished and experienced product, its a better option because of the things it can do.
No other software gives the power, features, and customization that PROS has, and it comes with many useful utilities and libraries.

The only setback of PROS for some people is that it requires some initiative to learn how to properly program in a real-world c++ environment, and some knowledge/research is needed to avoid making mistakes and understanding the documentation. Read the first 8 chapters (excluding 0) of learncpp.com and you will know everything you could possibly need for dealing with PROS.

To someone like me, who is passionate about programming and willing to read programming tutorials to learn the necessary knowledge to understand c++, the documentation is extremely well laid out, intuitive, and good looking. PROS allows me to do a wide range of things I would have a harder time doing with the other platforms, and has some pretty epic libraries.

If you are somewhat experienced with programming or motivated to learn, PROS seems a no-brainer to me. You just have to go a bit more out of your way to find the proper ways of doing things.

ā€‹

How else would you have it organized, given the wealth of information? It needs to be organized in some way or other, and I personally canā€™t really think of a better way to do it.

As with the <<, it is used in stringstreams to indicate the flow of text from individual sections to a whole. Someone did a lot of thinking to develop that system, and chose that to be the most intuitive operator. Again, how else would you have it =)

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#17

We had a vote last week on the Vex Discord server. You can tell it was a little biased =)

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#18

VCS: Never
RobotMesh: Newer? Havenā€™t really used it soā€¦
PROS: Probably the best of them all
VexCode: Pretty decent, More streamlined than PROS for actually downloading in stuff but PROS is mostly otherwise better.

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#19

Most of the information is quite vague and it sometimes assumes that you know what things mean or where something is located.
Some examples:
What is CLI? What does it stand for? https://pros.cs.purdue.edu/v5/cli/index.html
The battery of what? The battery of the remote or the V5 brain? https://pros.cs.purdue.edu/v5/api/cpp/misc.html#pros-battery
The temperature of what? The battery of the remote or the V5 brain?
https://pros.cs.purdue.edu/v5/api/cpp/misc.html#get-temperature
Where is the projects ā€œMakefile?ā€
https://pros.cs.purdue.edu/v5/tutorials/topical/wireless-upload.html
Etc.
PROS always assumes the reader knows where everything is, the definitions of everything such as literal, RTOS, typedefs, etc. But they fail to realize the audience of the readers are high schoolers while they are college students or teachers who have most likely a high knowledge of C++ and computer science definitions as they are pushing towards a degree or already have one.

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#20

Many people struggle with transitioning to PROS because PROS fails to provide straightforward information, instead makes the new user having to ask a thousand questions on VEX Discord server (Which when I did for the first time I was given a bit of backlash for asking questions because the questions were too ā€˜simpleā€™), or go outside of the API and Discord for 25-30% of the time and search on google to figure out resources that the PROS api decided to not include.

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