Modbus driver: C vs Java

I am soon going to start a project where I'm required to program a Modbus driver. My initial approach was to want to do it in Java, however my boss has had contact with a company that has experience in Modbus, and they said C is the better language to approach Modbus. So my boss pretty much demanded it to be in C. My C knowledge is not really big, so it would require 开发者_运维问答me to learn enough to get the Modbus driver working in proper and stable order.

So, my question to you stackoverflow people with some experience in Modbus: how important could the choice of C vs Java be? The modbus site seems to have Java libraries, if C was so superior to Java in every way, why would they have those libraries? Would it be useful to learn C properly for the advantages that might give?

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I only used some implementations of Modbus in C/C++ (in house implementations), but there are some open source implementations of modbus. I believe they can be used if the license suits you. You can implement it also in Java - it's a matter of choice; in that case you'll have to justify your choice.

LATER: this implementation is under BSD license. You should be able do anything with it - but don't forget to mention the source.