NXC for NXT and RobotC for EV3 feature comparison

[tabbycatrobots]

Has anyone done a feature comparison of NXC and RobotC? I've used NXC for over 4 years now and have truly
enjoyed creating robots with it, and have thousands and thousands lines of NXC code. I'm starting with the
EV3 and find EV3-G painful. I can't imagine myself writing libraries of functions for reliable Blue Tooth and
RS485 comms in EV3-G, as I have with NXC. From what I have read in the forums here, it doesn't sound like
there is sensor and motor support in Brixcc and NXC yet for the EV3. Or am I mistaken? And it sounds like
there is progress on RobotC for EV3. I'm wondering about using RobotC for my EV3. Any information, thoughts,
opinions are appreciated. Has anyone translated NXC code to RobotC? Is BT and RS485 (port 4 comms), feature
support similar in the 2 languages? Is there an IDE, like Brixcc for RobotC? Thanks for any ideas.
Howard

[HaWe]

hey,
I'm curious why Xander didn't reply yet because he's the one who is most involved into RobotC (RC) development around here...
but to my best knowlege:
- there is no RS485 UART mode at all for the EV3
- BT is not implemented yet by RC
- same for Wifi
- same for sound
- same for file r/w
- same for screen graphics
- I2C have some tricky/obscured differences by it's message building
- API commands and syntax for motor control and sensor polling are quite different.

So far RC supported just 1 master and 1 slave for BT (not 1+3 like NXC does), no idea if that has changed or will be changed for the future.

Anyway, transcoding surely will be possible if once the features will be available, but from my own experiences it will be painful to do if you got lot of NXC code...

[tabbycatrobots]

Hi,
Thank you for the info. This is interesting and useful. The translating from NXC to RobotC sounds more
complicated that I was hoping, or maybe that was just my wishful thinking. Although I would like BT support
for more than 1 slave, I currently only have projects with 1 slave. I found that if my robots are anywhere with
many cell phones around, the NXT can only reliably connect to 1 slave. I think I'll plan to get the RobotC EV3
Beta after I finish my current NXT project, and try it. Thanks again for the info.
Howard

[HaWe]

hey Howard,
an update about your experiences would be appreciated!
I myself am still thinking about alternatives to NXC like e.g., RC or Mono/C#.

[tabbycatrobots]

Yes, I'll report back when I try RobotC on the EV3. I expect it will be about a month or more until I finish my
current NXT project.
Yesterday at Worcester Polytechnic's Touch Tomorrow Festival (a NASA robot challenge and hands-on family
science fair), I got some ideas for new robots. And I'll need the EV3 and a capable 'C' to implement them.