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Unread 02-04-2014, 23:22
Ian Curtis Ian Curtis is offline
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FRC #1778 (Chill Out!)
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Re: FRC Blog - How We’re Doing and FIRST Babies

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zach O View Post
If everything I ever built worked perfectly the first time, I'd be one hell of an engineer. The reason problems arise is development environments and production environments differ. FIRST isn't an exception to this.

As for software related issues with the FMS, I think FIRST would benefit from getting some more in-house developers to build, debug, and support their software systems.
And any engineering organization should know this and design a test plan to catch as many of those things as possible.

When you are on the cutting edge (like Aerial Assist is*), there are inevitably some things you won't catch. Unfortunately, many of the things that were flubbed are not new problems. The HOT goal issue irks me to the core. That field logic has fundamentally one job, make one set of lights shine for 5 seconds, and then make another set of lights shine for 5 seconds. And after 5 weeks, that still doesn't work right!

*Credit where credit is due, Aerial Assist is fundamentally different to other FRC games. For the first time teams really are forced to work together, and a cohesive strategy isn't something you only see at the highest levels of play. And I think that's pretty dang cool.
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