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If I'm not allowed to toot my own horn, I think for controls, you probably should not start with choosing a programming language, the first step is learning con

If I'm not allowed to toot my own horn, I think for controls, you probably should not start with choosing a programming language, the first step is learning control theory and automata theory, you kinda have to understand feedback control/PID/steady state/jitter/hysteresis and the like. Python has never had great control libraries to begin with as far as I can remember (my info could be a bit outdated though), so the paid option is still Matlab/Simulink as it is their last niche really. Embedded firmware, probably C/C++/Rust. Not the answer you want to hear, but these are the languages for bare metal applications. Of course, if you are just using an Arduino/Pi, just use their SDK for their hardware on whichever language they support. Those two fields are just not very friendly towards beginners in general.

Waterluvian 22d ago
Yeah! Like when helping teens set up PID controllers for their CAN-bussed robot, it was very much a "we've got a lot of example working Java code with a PID Controller library already. So we're using that." The language itself is so inconsequential at the early stage, that you really just pick whatever gets in your way the least.
rmunn 22d ago
Please do toot your own horn. I assume you're referring to https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct — tell us why it's good.
- YuechenLi 22d ago
  Sure, short list: - Easier to write than Python other than the simplest script, almost no way to write bad code and have it compile, reads like pseudocode most of the time - Compiles into Go binary, runs at Go speed, compiles at Go speed - Trivial to wrap any Go library via LLMs, so any Go library is also an Oct library. - Can metaprogram existing Go codebases, so it doesn't really replace Go, just supplements it - Easy concurrency/parallelism - SI units as types - Can be used as build script for C/C++ in place of CMake - Einstein tensor notation - Builtin GPU acceleration via Vulkan It was designed as a teaching language for academics to stop writing bad code, but now I just get LLMs to do research/science for me with it for fun.

Waterluvian 22d ago

Yeah! Like when helping teens set up PID controllers for their CAN-bussed robot, it was very much a "we've got a lot of example working Java code with a PID Controller library already. So we're using that." The language itself is so inconsequential at the early stage, that you really just pick whatever gets in your way the least.

rmunn 22d ago

Please do toot your own horn. I assume you're referring to https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/oct — tell us why it's good.

YuechenLi 22d ago
Sure, short list: - Easier to write than Python other than the simplest script, almost no way to write bad code and have it compile, reads like pseudocode most of the time - Compiles into Go binary, runs at Go speed, compiles at Go speed - Trivial to wrap any Go library via LLMs, so any Go library is also an Oct library. - Can metaprogram existing Go codebases, so it doesn't really replace Go, just supplements it - Easy concurrency/parallelism - SI units as types - Can be used as build script for C/C++ in place of CMake - Einstein tensor notation - Builtin GPU acceleration via Vulkan It was designed as a teaching language for academics to stop writing bad code, but now I just get LLMs to do research/science for me with it for fun.