Hey,
Yea I second (or should i say third) what the others have said. While only a10th grader (although the team captain/programmer/electronics) I am familiar with this, in terms of FRC and programming while no expierence with circut boards.
-From a programmable board (microcontroller- "is a small computer on a single integrated circuit containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcontroller) perserpective, this would be relatively simple asumming you know some basic programming. This method could be accomplished using a cRIO or as I've been looking into recently a Arduino board.
-Now the part that I am not familiar with: Using only a circut board (breadboard). But what I do no is that in my school's physics class they commonly have to make something that will run off a timer using just circuts.
Hope this defines your 2 most basic options which each branch off on their own.