Programming competition
 

Robotics is a cool field; however, the chance of me going into that field is very slim. I will most likely stay in the computer science field and do programming or IT stuff. I know a lot of people that feel the same way.

I think there is a lack of programming competition in FIRST. Yeah Yeah, there is the PBasic language that we all use to program the robot. I was thinking more along the lines of desktop programming. Like, you have to create an application does "this" and "this" yada yada. There would have to be regulations, but I would hope that you could be able to use any language and IDE you want. The apps could be judged on UI design, speed, and reliability.

I don't know, its just an idea. I just thought it was odd that there is a 3D Animation Competition in a robotics league, but nothing to do with application/desktop programming or certain computer science fields.

Good idea? Bad idea? Comments appreciated :)

i think most teams are struggling to finish the robot/animation/other on time as it is; adding some kind of programming competition into this equation would probably dramatically reduce the quality of the controls software, the animation, and probably everything else

Well, not every team has to do it. Maybe teams would rather do a program competition than a 3d animation. Who knows? Better to have more choices than no choices.

I agree with this. I don't really understand how a 'desktop' programming competition would work though.

Robotics is an example of how programming can be applied. PBASIC is also the language of the Basic Stamp microcontroller, which is provided by Innovation First. If for instance, an object-oriented language is used (which would potentially offer a more useful programming experience), a new controller unit would have to be put in place...

I wasn't suggesting replacing PBasic at all. I meant completely separate competition, similar to the animation competition.

What's he's trying to say, is like w/ the website thing. That's not robotics-related technically. av11d is just giving an idea to expand it, not to replace anything. Sounds like a good/great idea though to. I'd be up for it.

i have a nice, easy suggestion, that most teams should be doing anyways.

as several topics in this forum have mentioned, there are some people trying to develop dashboard programs. most are rather generic, not much to them. my team, on the other hand, tends to make dashboards that are specific to each robot, which means that a new one is developed each year.

we put lots of time (well, we did it on a coach bus, but it still took some time :p) to make our dashboard program this year, and we tried to impress the judges with it, but they seemed to only show a passing interest, as in "oh, hey, what's that on the laptop? oh cool." it'd be nice for efforts in programming would be recognized more, as it is just as hard as actually building the robot (especially when it's late at night and you don't know why everything isn't working :p).

Re: Programming competition
 

I think that it is a great idea. I believe that a comp. directed toward the programmers on the team would be a wonderful choice. They have the anime and chairmans, theres always room for a programming comp.

-Greg

Sounds like a great idea. Perhaps they should consolidate all of the topics into a general media category and have the animation, programming, information, etc. subgroups. I do see it being somewhat difficult for them to come up with a different objective each year, so just the most creative and practical ideas would get "points".

Good Idea
 

Thats a good Idea. There are so many other areas of compatition why cant Programming be one? Now lets see if we can make it one.

Exactly... but how do we pitch it to FIRST and whatnot?

Well first we need to find out what all the teams think of it in general.... then if we have an overall approval then i say we go to FIRST and say " hey we would like to add a programming compatition, we have compatitions for a lot of other stuff why not programming?" Pitch to them the idea and what the regulations and rules might be... then hopefully it will take off from there.

Sounds good, i'm in! Heh. There could even be sub catergories like, general desktop applications, mobile device, and even like, custom hardware (including the driver dev.) or something.

There could be diffrent choices like, the desktop, hardware, and other aplacations. Based on what language you used had a diffrent set of rules and reg. to amke it more interesting. teams would have the choice to enter or not, they sent a package of rules and reg. they began working on it during the season. It would be somthing new and fun (well for me) for the teams to try to accoplish. now we just need to see what the general mood of the teams twards this.....

Good good, i sure hope that this goes over well.