RobotC is a product of Robomatter Inc., a spin off from Carnegie Mellon University and is widely used in the FIRST and VEX robotics competitions. In many ways, it is very similar to the traditional line code you may already know, with numerous added commands and functions to control robots. It is relatively inexpensive (less than $100), but the curriculum that accompanies it will double your cost. RobotC has evolved over the years and now has a Robot Virtual Worlds where you can program a virtual robot and try out your programs without waiting to complete the physical device (for more money, of course!). For younger students or those who are new to line code programming, there is also a graphical version of RobotC, which visually reminds me of Scratch. RobotC 4.0 for LEGO MINDSTORMS was released in the fall of 2014. At the time I wrote this book, I found that many of the commands, sample programs, and documents were not fully updated from the NXT MINDSTORMS to EV3.

When writing a program...