Hardware description languages are generally used to describe electrical programming methods. These languages are quite familiar to some robotics experts because they are used to programming FPGAs. FPGAs allow you to develop electronic hardware without actually producing a silicon chip, which can be a faster and simpler choice for some developers. If you do not develop electronic prototype products, you may never use HDLs. Nevertheless, it is necessary to understand this programming language because they are quite different from other programming languages. One key point: all operations in HDLs are concurrent, unlike the sequential operations of processor-based programming languages.
Assembly allows you to program at the 0 and 1 level. This is essentially the lowest level of programming language. With the rise of Arduino and other microcontrollers, you can now conveniently program at a low level using C/C++. This means Assembly may become less necessary for most robotics experts.
MATLAB and its related open-source resources like Octave are particularly favored by some robotics engineers; it is used for data analysis and control system development. Some experts can develop entire robotic systems just using MATLAB. If you want to analyze data, generate advanced images, or develop control systems, you might want to learn MATLAB.
C# is a specialized programming language provided by Microsoft. The reason for including C#/.NET here is mainly due to the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, which primarily uses C# as its development language. If you plan to use this system, you will likely need to use C#.
Java hides low-level storage functions from programmers, making it easier to write than some languages (like C), but understanding the underlying code logic is also more difficult. If you have a computer science background and transition to robotics (which many do, especially in research), you might have already learned Java. Like C# and MATLAB, Java is an interpreted language, meaning it is not compiled into machine code. Instead, the Java Virtual Machine interprets instructions at runtime. Using Java theoretically allows you to run the same code on different machines, thanks to the Java Virtual Machine. In practice, this is not always feasible and can sometimes lead to slow code execution. However, Java is very popular in certain areas of robotics, so you may need it.
In recent years, there has been a huge resurgence in learning Python, especially in the field of robotics. One reason may be that Python and C++ are the two main programming languages in ROS. Unlike Java, Python focuses on ease of use. Python does not require much time to perform routine tasks such as defining and forcing variable types, which are common in programming. Additionally, Python has a wealth of free libraries, meaning you do not have to “reinvent the wheel” when you need to implement basic functions. Furthermore, Python allows for simple bindings with C/C++ code, meaning that performance-intensive parts of the code can be implemented in these languages to avoid performance loss. As more and more electronic products begin to support “out-of-the-box” Python (along with Raspberry Pi), we may see more Python in robotics. (The Raspberry Pi Foundation: A small charity organization in the UK established to promote technology rather than profit from selling technology.)
Finally, we arrive at the number one programming language for robots! Many believe that C and C++ are a great starting point for new robotics engineers. Why? Because many hardware libraries use these two languages. These languages allow interaction with low-level hardware and enable real-time performance; they are very mature programming languages. Nowadays, you may use C++ more than C because the former has more features. C++ is essentially an extension of C. Learning a bit of C will be useful, especially when you find a hardware library written in C. C/C++ is not as simple and easy to use as Python or MATLAB. Implementing the same functionality in C will require a lot of time and more lines of code. However, since robotics heavily relies on real-time performance, C and C++ are the programming languages closest to being the “standard language” for robotics experts.
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