View Single Post
  #20   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 10-01-2013, 08:36
fovea1959's Avatar
fovea1959 fovea1959 is offline
Herder of programmers
AKA: Doug Wegscheid
FRC #3620 (The Average Joes)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: St Joseph
Posts: 336
fovea1959 will become famous soon enough
Real Life Experience

one of the other teams here in town was a rookie team last year. In spite of the fact that the sponsoring school already taught C++ to sophomores, they did their bot in LabVIEW last year because of the tight tight timeline (team didn't get formed until Nov or Dec). During the season, they were worried about getting to competition, they judged that having good support from other local teams helped that more than reusing what they knew. You can argue that it was or was not a good decision, though frustrating for the C++ programmers, but the team did well, and the programming did not hold them back, near as I could tell from the sidelines.

But as soon as competition was over, the students rewrote last year's robot in C++, learned all the foibles of running on the cRIO, along with how to use the WPIlib. This fall, the school did a Saturday C++ class for the freshman and anyone else that hadn't taken it at school. They are doing this years bot in C++, and I have no doubt that they will have great code. Student ownership was key.

Greg's earlier statement still stands: you need to get the bot to move in the next few weeks. You have time later to rethink your language decision when the pressure is off (but you need to dedicate yourself to actually doing it in the off-season).

Last edited by fovea1959 : 10-01-2013 at 08:42.