![]() ![]() For some statements, a parameter (such as distance, power level, degrees, or side) is required which gives further instructions to the robot. All Natural Language statements below require a set of parentheses followed by a semi-colon. The Natural Language used here is an extension of the RobotC language. Our goal when developing pseudocode will be to identify and organize the simple behaviors a robot needs to complete its mission. It lets you address the important details of your program without having to worry about the less relevant parts getting in your way. Natural Language is a sort of halfway language between English and computer code. ![]() RobotC The Natural Language for the Fall 2015 season is as follows: ![]() ![]() A Non-Functioning EV3 (i.e., frozen or dead).The good news is that there are lots of replacement text-based languages for Mindstorms NXT, from Java to Lua (or, if you want to stick with visual programming, you can also use LabView, the professional-grade language that NXT-G is based on). And for your kids, there's no time like the present to introduce real programming, using coding conventions that will be as relevant in the decades to come as they were in decades past. For anyone who's ever programmed, there's nothing better for understanding programming logic than properly tabbed and commented code, all in a column of text as God intended. "if.then.else", "while", even "for.next" - you won't know how much you actually like those constructs until you don't have them. Whether it's the crazy sprawl of blocks over the work area (even a simple loop can require screens of slow horizontal scrolling), the lack of floating point math or, perhaps worst of all, the total absence of debugging tools, sooner or later you're going to start longing for a proper programming language that uses, you know, text and stuff. It's great for teaching kids the basics, but once they embark on anything remotely ambitious they're bound to run into trouble. Play around with Lego Mindstorms NXT enough and at some point you'll inevitably get frustrated with NXT-G, its graphical programming language of "blocks" that you drag around and connect with "wires". ![]()
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