[JesseK]

I like comparisons to the vague, esoteric, "real life". Real life has deadlines and engineers have to live with their choices, good or bad, after those deadlines.

Products have ship dates, projects have delivery dates, and software has launch dates. Iteration after those dates are usually due to a continuous cycle (cars improve every year), a public black eye (the iPhone 4 antenna, the 2007 Banebot transmission), or the need to adapt to market conditions after the fact (in which case you've already lost market share).

Allowing teams to work on their robot between Week 6 and Championships would be more like real life than leaving build season completely open. It'd also give mentors on all teams a break.

I'm not advocating a 'level playing field' by any means. I'm completely against removing the 45 day build season deadline on both principle and from a burn-out perspective. I'm also simply pointing out that I don't remember a 30 pound withholding allowance before the 2009 snow storms, so it's not like FIRST tried to balance elites and non-elites with that either.

Teaching kids how to win is one thing. Encouraging them to adopt a design paradigm that isn't pragmatic is entirely something else.