What do you guys think is the easiest programming switch from RobotC? We should have V5 next year, I want to get a jump on programming. Would you suggest RMS, PROS, or one of the VCS options?
I went with VCS but with the release of RMS on desktop I’m planning on switching over. I’ve had too many saving issues with VCS.
We’ve used RobotC for many years (IQ & then VRC). This season, we used VCS for a bit and really didn’t like it. While the transition itself was easier than expected, the bugs in the program caused a great deal of aggravation and made an already difficult V5 transition even worse. When we go back to V5, we plan to probably use either RMS or PROS (as I have heard both of those are quality programs with lots of updates and support).
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If you’re talking about the easiest to switch, it would be VCS for me. I learned VCS within an hour and got a robot fully functional and automated with macros in around 4-5 hours. Although VCS is easy to learn, you will realize that every statement you have for motors is PID, and if you do classical programming with the statements driving is really choppy and wavy when you control the drivetrain with the joystick. If you are going to be doing VCS, go on my profile and look at my bookmarks. Click “VCS Open Loop Motor Control” to program the drive motors in VCS without the internal motor PID’s being activated.
But, if you want to have more options with how to program your robot, I would really suggest learning PROS, even though VCS is easier to learn. If you need any help in PROS, join the Unofficial VEX Discord Server and we can gladly help you out: VEX Robotics Competition
I prefer PROS. It’s got more features and controls than VCS. It’s based on the pre-existing Atom editor. If Atom isn’t your thing, you can use it with pretty much any C++ IDE. You can save with Ctrl + S. Normal file system so you can have all your functions/classes in different folders/files. Dark theme. Wireless downloads. No laggy drag and drop. It’s just nice. If you are familiar with C++ already, then it should be pretty easy to get working. Otherwise you can probably just ride on your RobotC knowledge.
I haven’t tried RMS all to much, so you may want to look into it more. I just think PROS feels cleaner. My sister team tried it, but they also switched to PROS.
If you end up using VSC C++, may Stackoverflow help you. I don’t think its been updated at all. Its color scheme hurts. It’s not just the light theme (Im fine with the RobotC light theme), but the text colors. It hurts to look at. There is no support for wireless downloads. The file system is some weird zip file, so good luck putting classes in different files easily. You can’t have multiple projects open at once. The nice GUI motor and sensor setup from RobotC has been replaced by a drag and drop thing that I quite frankly dislike. There aren’t keyboard shortcuts, and saving is behind a mess of a menu. The API is watered down even in the VEX C++ PRO option. Just, sadness.
The VCS blockkit thing looks nice though. Haven’t used it but at first glance it looks nice. Good and clean. Let’s people see the code it generates with a push of a button. And its simple. Perfect.
VCS is by far the easiest transition especially if you watch the transitioning videos on Youtube . The link to the first of those videos is here:
Transitioning from ROBOTC to VEX Coding Studio - Week 1 - YouTube
I started using PROS last week which is about ten times better than VCS. The only problem is that you end up trying to code using the API index because there are not a lot of videos that document PROS for V5. I found that it was easy to start on VCS and then switch over to PROS.
Go with PROS or RMS. I don’t think anyone would actually recommend VCS. Also VCS hasn’t gotten an update to date.
PROS is basically as streamlined as it gets if you know what you’re doing and is basically no frills once you learn the syntax.
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