Re: What do your programmers do when programming has finished?
 

Me too, but none of us are even named Joel. It's weird.

Re: What do your programmers do when programming has finished?
 

What is "finished"? Can't make your shooting more accurate? Automate more actions? Drivetrain perfect? Totally optimized? Totally documented? Commented and simple to change? Never have any issues/bugs? Are you using every second on that autonomous period? Does your drive team have any other ideas? Is there more training you can do, of your own programmers or in helping other teams? Any old or off-season bots you can work on bettering? Any new controls you're interested in (this is a major hobby or our team)?

There's always more to do! There are ancillary activities you can do as well, but all our sub-teams find it valuable to continue looking for ways to improve our current season goals/performance (unless training gaps are dire). I guarantee you'll be blown away with some of what they come up with--as long as they save the old code versions!

Re: What do your programmers do when programming has finished?
 

Yah, there's no such thing as done. Either look through the code and see how you can improve it (keeping the original as a backup, of course) or learn something new! Like TheSoftwareGuy said, knowing how the electronics works is a big help for a programmer. But if you're sure you are done, minesweeper is a great way to kill time. ;)

Re: What do your programmers do when programming has finished?
 

You are never done programming, and that's what makes it fun.

Develop better sensor feedback and debug output.

Re: What do your programmers do when programming has finished?
 

This is engineering. Nothing is ever done. It might be "good enough", it might be at a state where "I think this'll work", but it's never done! Even in the off season, we're making changes and reprogramming things.

Heck, just last week we sat down and did a code review (the programming team presented the code to the main programming mentor, myself, and the programming teacher at the school, who is taking the year off from the team). During the review, we changed a few things that needed changing, discovered the cause (and the fix) of the only real issue we had noticed in the robot's performance, and created a list of stuff that should be done for the code. And this is after having a very successful regional up in Duluth a few weeks ago (placing 4th)!

Re: What do your programmers do when programming has finished?
 

I helped build our pit and plan on making a video explaining the entirety of our code as a nice resource for future FRC programmers. But yeah, the post-build season is much less demanding than the build season