What’s the Best Programming Language for Getting Started in Robotics?

What exactly are you looking to achieve in robotics? There’s a lot to cover—are you designing industrial robots or something else? Before getting deep into programming, you should also focus on some math and electronics basics.

If you want to do real-time programming, C++ on Ubuntu is the way to go. Python works really well for things like post-processing and creating plots. Julia is also an option, but Python seems to come up more often.

A lot of robotics companies use both C++ and Python. C++ is great for optimization, which is crucial in a lot of applications.

Robotics is super broad! If your projects don’t require super high speed, you can probably stick with Python. Otherwise, if you’re going into embedded systems, C or C++ will be important. Your choice might also hinge on what you’re comfortable with or what existing codebases you need to deal with.

C++ and Python are definitely the most commonly used languages in robotics. If you're looking into frameworks, check out ROS (Robot Operating System), which is a huge toolkit that primarily uses C++ and Python for its functionality. C is still used for low-power embedded systems, but I’ve noticed Rust getting more attention these days too.