Recruiting Programmers
 

This topic was brought up by one of my mentors after the end of championships this year. I was the head programmer on our team for the past two seasons and am leaving the team for college next year. We have a programmer who will take over next year but he will be a senior then and we don't know who else can be brought in after he graduates. This is a concern for us and I asked how the team recruited programmers in the past. I was told that they used to basically assign programming to a person, generally from electronics, and that I was the first person in our team's 14 years to voluntarily do programming. Our team has no problem recruiting students to the team for building, electronics, chairmans, community outreach, and administrative positions but we struggle with programming.

I know that assigning programming to a person on the team where the programming will take the backseat can't be the best option and that there has to be some way to recruit people to programming full time. I am asking all of the teams out there how they recruit students to do programming on their team or how they handle this. Many thanks in advanced for the help and advice.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

What my mentor does is recruit from the AP Computer Science class he teaches. That is how I got "recruited".

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

Certainly you need to recruit from any computer science classes, but it looks like you need to make programming:
(1) exciting and visibly so to the external observer.
(2) an active element of the design process from day 1

At the championship, Team 302 presented our Virtual Robot System (VIRSYS) which could really help you out on these two points. We expect that on the recruiting side, it will pull in students interested in software from a video gaming perspective. That could be huge.

We'll be releasing everything shortly, so look for that thread somewhere here within the next week or so.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

I was introduced to programming Freshman year and learned LabVIEW by myself during the summer before Sophomore year. Sophomore year, without the title as lead I led the Programming team. I have been doing Programming for a while and just handing out titles will not help the situation (bribing them to do the work) Perhaps introducing them with classes or other activities will help. I am coming to the end of my Programming years on Krunch and is finding the person to replace me once I leave. If I choose someone I will make sure that he/she is reliable and will work. You have to find people that will actually work on the code and will stay with it.

:) Hope this helps!

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

For our team, at least, a lot of it has to do with the off season. Our off season program emphasizes getting students exposed to every aspect of the team - they spend some time doing mechanical stuff, electrical stuff, programming stuff, and PR. They certainly don't become experts in it... but they're supposed to learn enough to know whats going on in each area, and to make an educated decision as to where they want to work.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

Wow, my experence with programming happened the same way with tori. Learned it over the summer before sophmore year led the programming sophmore year and am now trying to teach my replacement

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

The best way is probably to ask around the best you can, not all districts have extensive computer programming classes, but you want somebody that is passionate about programming. Those will make for the best people to recruit. Also don't be afraid to look at the team and see if anyone has any siblings that might be a good fit, I've seen some kids start programming for an FRC team in 7th grade using Labview (if you get a mentor that can teach them it helps too). I'll let you imagine what they do now. (note mentors can also be seniors).

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

I had a similar experience as tori as well, except in my case, a week before build season I found out that the programming mentor from out team was not going to be there during build season (family issue). However, most students are not as driven as those that are one these forums.

Therefore, it is one of my goals next year to find and teach a student programming. Is it the most glamorous job? No, in fact you are typically the first person blamed when a mystery problem arises. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes not. However, that is a fact of life and whoever you find needs to be ready to deal with a heavy work load if something goes wrong. You need to find and inspire someone to be able to put in time and then persevere through the stress of those "mystery problems" that we all face.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

What I've found is many of the best programmers are simply good problem or puzzle solvers. May I suggest having some kind of placement tests when people come to check out the team. This doesn't have to be an exam in the traditional sense, but just try to identify a certain skill sets. I think many people don't become programmers simply because they are #1 intimidated by it and #2 don't find code immediately interesting. One simple way to do this is everyone who joins is given a mindstorms kit and told to program something simple. I think what you'll find will surprise both you and the student. Many students have just never tried coding. Its an incredibly rewarding experience for problem and puzzle solvers to get a robot running by itself. Its all in how you sell it, you sell it as programming and people may be immediately deterred, maybe rephrasing it as automation would be more attractive :)

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

My team uses LabVIEW to program.

I joined as a senior this year, so it is my first and last year involved with my school's team (as a student...). I actually joined with the intent of being involved with the website and programming.

I was nominated programming captain and ended up being the person who wrote the program. The person who programmed last year came back to teach us, and I learned a lot during build season as I went along. Similar events occurred with the website, except there was no teaching session and I already had web design and development experience, whereas I was unfamiliar with LabVIEW.

I have been told that my team has always had issues with programming. My school does not offer AP Computer Science, so we are not able to recruit out of that class, which makes finding people interested in programming difficult. I love lineskier's idea involving the mindstorms kit. Anything hands on where people can see what programming actually is about is great.

In conclusion, I think that programming a robot is an amazing experience, even more amazing than programming a computer, because the robot moves and is able to analyze its environment using sensors. With a computer, the things you make it do are virtual; with a robot, the things you make it do are real and physical. If we make programming real to students through physical demonstrations they might find they actually enjoy programming and lose the image of the weirdo furiously typing white text into a black terminal. When they stop seeing themselves limited by syntax rules and realize that they can make a machine do what they tell it to do, that is when they really understand what programming is about.

PS @James Critchley - I'll be looking out for VIRSYS. I'm interested in seeing what it is.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

As a mechanical engineer, I use labVIEW. I am not a very good programmer, but knowing labVIEW can be a valuable skill set for anyone to learn. You don't have to use dedicated programmers. This year, and a lot this up coming summer, we are getting more students who have not learned labVIEW exposure to it. It helps prevent potential shortages with programmers but it also eliminates some of the apparent "smoke and mirrors" around programming.

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

For the most part what scares people away from programming (at least in my experience) is the notion that programming is "hard". Staring at long lines of text or giant convoluted labview diagrams is intimidating to someone who's never done compsci before. The myth of programming somehow being some mythical impossible to do task needs to be dispelled first.

Also make sure it is clear that no prior experience with coding whatsoever is required to learn how to program, the skills of programming can be learnt somewhat painlessly if a person has enough motivation and dedication.

I noticed this year that you guys were using C to program your robot. (I could be mistaken) If your volunteers happen to show up late in the year or they don't feel they can learn text based code then Labview is always a good alternative. In the 2010 season I taught myself how to program in Labview during the build season without any prior experience with compsci in general. Labview in general is rather intuitive and learning it was not too challenging. Good luck with your search!
-Sebastian

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

LOL. Thats awesome. I'm glad I'm not the only one! :)

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

Oh my. Our lead programming mentor had a heart attack during the build season and ended up having heart surgery so he was out for a few weeks. Thank goodness for Ken our other software mentor for helping us out or we wouldve been in trouble. :) Ken we owe you one!! :)

Yea being blamed for a mystery problem is something programmers have to deal with. I had to learn that early in the build season a couple of years ago. Also for new programmers believe in yourself and dont be afraid to voice your opinion about certain things when it comes to the robot. Remember you are going to be the one programming it and you dont want too elaborate code for debugging.

:) Stay positive because negative energy transfers quickly!

Re: Recruiting Programmers
 

Of the 30-odd members on our team next year, it seems there will be at least 5 programmers. I'm pretty sure we only need 2. I'm game for a trade; no one here knows how to do a decent CAD, and I'm left teaching myself...

In all seriousness, try to get people to "double major" in the subsystems of the team. Whoever is doing wiring would be a great candidate to read a few LabView tutorials and become a programmer. Not to mention, this person doesn't have to constantly communicate the ever changing pin layouts in the Digital Sidecar or remember how many Victors he/she has to code for. This avoids night-before-ship dialog like this:

"I'm sorry Jack, I can't remember the slot for this PWM."
"Just wing it, I'll deploy and we'll wing it."
"What."

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.