So I am part of a robotics program at my school and our teacher tells us to use blocks. Most of my sister teams are listening to them. Blocks is easier to learn, and I can see why but this is getting gout of hand. They are now telling everyone to move because it is better. What does your team(s) use?
Edit : Im not saying Im using blocks I just want to know who uses blocks.
Our team uses blockes. I like It because it is easyer to understand, and you dont have to be an expert to use it.
If you know how to do text-based programming, that will always be “better” than graphical programming.
Graphical may be good as a learning tool, but it will hold you back far sooner than text-based programming in any reasonable language.
Plus, programming in the real world is done with text. Graphical programming might help you learn to think like a programmer, but at some point you will need to get used to typing code to be competitive in the increasing number of careers that involve programming.
Yes. Graphical programming is ok for very unexperienced beginners, but otherwise move to text ASAP.
I use text because I cant stand blocks. I know some people think its better, but theres just so much you can do when you have text that you can’t with blocks.
There’s so much more control with text based that blocks just can’t give you
For roboteers that can’t program we teach block, since we can teach logic and structure which is the most important part of programming. Once they master that we move them to text, text is lots of messing around with syntax. Trying to mash the two can be done, I did it for years with Robot C. Robot C was easier since the help/debugging it has not been matched to date. But given today’s environment, that is how we go today. Robotmesh’s environment is our choice since the transition is pretty smooth. So pick Robotmesh blocks and move to Python and don’t look back.
That’s the thing I love about RMS. It facilitates the move from blocks to text (you can see generated python code after writing a blocks program). Honestly I feel that the educational side of Vex would benefit significantly if RMS was integrated into the official curriculum.
I think you’ll be pleased with some of the new features in development for VEXcode 2.0 this spring…
Ships in 8 weeks? Sticking with RMS, they seem to under promise and over perform. You might want to look at what they do, it’s pretty nice.
I used RMS blocks throughout last season, and it worked great for me. Blockly allowed me to understand my code and eventually make the transition to text-based.
As for graphical being a holdback, this is the case. At my state competition last year, I ran out of memory in my blockly project (maybe shouldn’t have had so many autons). The switch to python before worlds was easy and clean, and I would recommend it.
I wanted to shared our updated roadmap in this conversation as VEXcode V5 will contain both Python Language support and Blocks to Text transition tools in our next update after VEX Worlds. These features are currently being stress-tested in an internal beta version to ensure they’re fully functional for the 2.0 release.
What specifically can you do with text that you can’t do with graphical?
I think the main thing is that it doesn’t allow you to access libraries that teams commonly use. It would be cumbersome but I’m pretty sure you could even do a custom PID in graphical.
I would always personally use text as it’s just much faster for me to do so. But I have over 20 teams and graphical programming is the way to go if you want the kids doing the work themselves. if you’re using graphical you don’t necessarily have a programmer because they can all do it.
I switched to PROS for my young kids because they knew text based coding from their IQ days and I was able to sit with them and really walk through the logic and structure with them.
Absolutely not the norm, but they know how to troubleshoot and make successful programs.
Had vexcode been ready when we started I would’ve used that instead. I will use vexcode for all new Iq kids and potentially new vrc kids next year
@OscarMNOVA12 Start with RMS now, it’s available, works well and we’ve had great success with it.
text based programming is significantly more efficient and key to getting things like pid and odometry to work since i noticed that the block programming software is missing more complex math functions. give them a taste of odometry and they will switch instantly
but if all your code is time based then blocks is sorta fine
pros gang
who gave you that taste of odometryđź‘€, but i completely agree except for the pros gang part
we have odometry 8) and pros is nice since can use any ide u want
just ask carlos who gave you odom
but nah VCS is op because it has 1Hz refresh rate and no commands
(This is sarcasm by the way)
PROS also has some other nice features. Despite a few things I wish were different, I can never go back to VexCode now.
