Teaching Java
 

Hello everyone.
this year, being the senior programmer, it is my job to teach new programmers their new language. I've started to teach them object orientation, basic structures, instantiating variables, and some basic robotics classes and functions. as an added challenge, there are a lot more programers this year than any other. I need to get everyone trained and when build season comes, find enough work to go around. division of labor has been a problem we've encountered in the past.

ideas? suggestions? questions? comments?

Re: Teaching Java
 

Have them read through the documentation, especially the WPILib Cookbook
http://www.wbrobotics.com/attachment...ibCookbook.pdf

Teaching and using some form of version control system like Git or Subversion is highly recommended with multiple programmers.

Once they've gotten sufficiently up to speed with the language and the FRC conventions, split them up into groups of 2 or 3 and have them re-write the code for the previous year's robot with minimal referencing of the previous year's code. This will give them practice writing subsystems and commands, debugging, but also working together as a team.

Also, try making a few SmartDashboard widgets just for variety

Re: Teaching Java
 

Teach them about state machines, or how properly to use threads.

These seem to be a recurring area for confusion for those new to realtime embedded programming.

Re: Teaching Java
 

Great! thank you. i'll be sure to include this into my lessons.

Re: Teaching Java
 

State machines should definitely be on your curriculum.

The WPILib lets you seemingly run multiple processes at once, but happily it is almost entirely single-threaded. We're spared the really arcane aspects of threaded code.

Re: Teaching Java
 

Our team is in a similar state, with a lot of fairly junior programmers. The first concern is bringing everyone up to speed on the fundamentals of programming, Java, and NetBeans. Later we'll worry about WPILib and the Smart Dashboard.

Something I'm trying this year is a free graphics library from processing.org, but integrated into NetBeans. This library was created to introduce non-technical folks to coding. It's got a very short learning curve. I'm hoping that it will be more motivating than just having them write "hello world" and basic console programs.

A dr. Kjell has a great computer science tutorial you could use just google "Kjell Java"

Also you could try codingbat.com

I know what u mean im also a senior and i am teaching an experianced c++ programmer and a n unexperianced programmer but i only have those two members for programming besides me. On top of thing my mentor left, at least he taught me well :)

Re: Teaching Java
 

One thing that my team has been using to teach new programmers has been Robocode. Robocode is a game where you design your own virtual 2D robot, and battle against other robots. We have had weekly competitions for our programmers to compete with each other in. That's the first thing I'd recommend.

The second thing I would recommend would be showing videos on Git, Java, OOP, etc. Shorter videos that would be educational. Often times the senior programmer isn't very good at explaining programming in an engaging way, but is far better at answering questions. That's the style of teaching I think you should follow.