FTC "easy robot programming" alternative to Blockly (overly simple with no support for modules) and Java (vastly too complicated with no real support for robot programming).
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First, and foremost, easy to program.
- This is targeted at high school students who have never programmed before.
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Modularity
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Allow the program to be represented as a set of independent bite-sized modules.
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Allow re-use of modules across different programs (FTC "opmodes").
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Support the creation of team libraries that can be re-used from season to season.
- This allows teams to capture and reuse what they've learned, so that they can continually improve from one season to the next.
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Direct support for State Machines.
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Often robot autonomous routines are diagrammed as state machines with chains of actions linked together, branching at decision points.
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This language directly supports that using Decision Logic Tables for the branching decision points, and labeled blocks of code for actions that are linked with simple "goto" statements.
- This language has no stack, so infinite loops of gotos are directly supported.
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Autonomous programming is easy.
- With no stack, it is very easy to run multiple autonomous threads concurrantly. For example, move forward 5 ft while raising the elevator 14 inches.