Hello and sorry for my poor english, i’m an Italian C++ programmer that always works with Windows and/or microprocessor.
My firm is evaluating the BBB as a candidate for a task that now is made by 2 or 3 different device.
I’ll try to describe our product trying to give you a good picture of what i’d need.
Our product is like as an oscilloscope (scopemeter? what’s the word?) for a certain automation machinery.
Right now it is “driven” by a Motorola DSP that do all the sampling. It feeds data thru a DualPortRam to a Rabbit 3200 which
- handle a TCPIP server socket connection to the Windows PC (there’s an exe showing the data, graphs and so on)
- handle a RS232/422 serial port for the same exe for the PC users that still needs this kind of connection
- drive an old Monochromatic LCD display using a i2C line (which is read by an ATMega644P that phisically drives the display, the leds and the keys on the front of our device).
Now, we would like to change to a TFT Color display with touchscreen and remove everything that’s “up” the DualPortRam.
So, the BBB should read that DPR, offer the Server Socket (we’re evaluating the need to keep the serial connection). We’re still trying to decide if the same BBB should also drive the TFT display (which is “seen” basically as an external memory, with a 16bit databus and the classic /CE, /WR cycle) or if we need another BBB just for it (it’s a matter of retrofit before than efficency).
This all was all developed in C/C++/Dynamic C (the Rabbit board does not use standard C), but, since very little can be ported to the new hardware, i’m trying to understand what could be the best approach for the BBB. Standard C++? Java? Other scripting? a mix of them?
Speed is a factor: the main task of the onboard display, as well for the Windows EXE, is to show realtime graphics (about 1KB of data, right now) and we want to show them as fast as possible. So the part of code that read from the DPR and the one that draw the graph in memory and the send the image to the display should be REALLY fast. Once read, the same data are kept for the PC (so, send by the TCPIP socket) which i hardly know how it shoul be do 'cause the i used the Rabbit TCPIP libraries without any trouble or modification.
I’d go, for habits and “culture” toward standard C++, but i’m totally ignorant about Linux, the BBB and how it can handle Java or other scripted code. Also, i don’t have the time to try everything. I need to choose well, and stick with my choice 
So, what language should i look for?
And: what libraries, IDE, or whatever?
Thanks in advance, and sorry for this long post. I tried to be the mode detailed i can 'cause i understand that the answer is specific to my needs.