Reply To: Convenient IDE for Mono C# for EV3 needed!

[Helmut Wunder]

well,
actually Sketch C is not low-level-programming in my opinion. It’s more like NXC or RobotC, i.g. ANSI C featuring pointers and recursions plus C++ objects (which are automatically included).
I/O pins are not much different from NXT or EV3 ports:
You may read them digitally or analog, so readDigital(p) is like SensorTouch(p) and readAnalog(p) is like SensorRaw(p) or SensorADC(p).
Driving a motor forward by x% pwm , e.g, On(p, pwm) for the NXT or EV3 is exactly like writeAnalog(p,pwm) for an Arduino.
So to my experience -for robot programming – there’s 1 like the other.
Even reading i2c sensor data is as easy as switching on a bedside lamp:
while(Wire.available()) { i2cInput[i] = Wire.read(); ++i; }
I meanwhile managed to set up a i2c connection between a NXT and an Arduino, I managed to set up simultaneous PID controls by NXC for the NXT and by Sketch for an Arduino. It was a matter of a couple of days to write it top-down, I didn’t have to struggle with new, implements, extends, derivate methods, throw exceptions, private or public or make one to the kind of the other, and I don’t have to deal with trillions of classes or uses or headers or dynamic linked libs and included project files or makefiles and all the mess.
If I need a function foo or sensor or motor or screen access I just write it down and don’t need a class for it to combine a extend by another class. Sketch also uses objects, but I don’t need to think even 1 microsecond of what class it’s about.

And if I compile a source file to an executable, I get just 1 executable file (what I expect to get) and not half a disk space full of directories and subdirectories and additional files and even more files and more extra sub-subdirectories and some where inside and in between there is – sic! – also the desired executable file – if you look hard enough.

In this respect, C# plus Mono and VC is not much different from Lejos and Java plus Eclipse. It both strike me dead.

As simple as Sketch and NXC as programming languages are, the same kind of simplicity is in the IDE which is needed an used: BCC and the Sketch IDE both are exactly-made-to-measure IDEs, no ballast which is not needed for robots.
And all and everything installed and set up by just 1 single setup file.

Finally I want to program just 1 (ONE) Robot with all available sensors and motors and additional I/Os (and not a high culture of robots and not a troop of webservers or multiplayer browser games).