Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

I'm one of the programmers on our team, the only programmer actually.

What I've done is that I've bragged to my buddies in computer science 2 (going into computer science 3 (independent study)) to join and help program. Without the full commitment, seeing as we're only a club.

I constantly talk to my friends in ap computer science to join.

Get people from those classes to join and get involved, they show an interest just by being in the class. Why not give them some hands on with a robot.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

Thanks for the suggestions. I would have responded earlier but AP Testing has taken a lot of time.

As far as the suggestion to interest people from the computer science classes, there actually aren't computer science classes at our school for us to draw from.

As far as the suggestion of getting everyone in the team involved with all the subsystems during the offseason so that everyone has some idea of how the other systems work is a great idea and I will definitely try to get our team to implement this for next year. I have also gotten our team to consider using VEX as a training platform for summer workshops and/or for new incoming members during the fall semester of school. Thanks for all the suggestions and advice.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

To back up Josh and slightly redirect this thread..

I'm told our school is definitely lacking in Comp. Sci. classes of any quality. Which is distressing to me as an alumnus, but whatever. Suffice to say that we don't have an easily identified talent pool to draw from. Suggestions that we rotate members through different sub-teams is definitely a good suggestion. I'll look into how we can implement that in the off-season.

We actually have a good programming mentor, but she's only experienced in C/C++ and wouldn't transition well to Labview, due to the usual headaches structured text programmers have with Labview. So we're looking for the even smaller subset of people that are interested/capable of learning C++ programming. This, of course, precludes the strategies of throwing students at programming and seeing who runs away screaming, since the prerequisites would likely guarantee that everyone runs screaming.

We do have a fairly steady group of students coming from a middle school FRC program, some with basic Labview knowledge. Any suggestions on keeping them interested in programming and transitioning them to C++ would also be useful.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

Currently BOB's programmer group looks healthy. This season we had a senior, 2 sophomores including me, two freshmen, and a programming mentor that is an alumni of the team. We abandoned Labview this season to go for Java. We're interested in using Python in a future season. I don't think we are ever planning on going back to Labview.

We have no computer science or any programming focused classes available to pool from. I know that we miss a number of kids who would be interested in joining the team due to our lack of publicity of what the team is about in the high school. We generally do an announcement that may not be heard, some flyers on the wall, and members of the team recruiting people they think would be interested. Some kids consider joining and opt not to. I never kept track of how many of the kids came from a FIRST Lego League team in the school district.

I think programming can be explained as the sum of logic and math to solve the problem called the "robot." The person uses a language with an array of available tools to coax the computer into following the logic you want. Mathematics becomes involved as a solid way for the computer to measure what you want. Probably not the best explanation but what I think of it.

I guess I agree with what some people are saying by recruiting with something along the lines of welcoming a problem solver even if they aren't familiar with personal computers. Most teams weren't familiar originally with the cRIO back in 2009 and now people are making things like a script parsing autonomous mode.