Quote:
Originally Posted by BriteBacon
Teach them before build season on the basics. This will also help filter out people who aren't 100% serious on joining the programming team. In the past our team has recoded our old robots so the new students can get the actual experience they need before build season.
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Totally agree with this statement. Way back in 2009 our only experienced programmer (student) was a senior and
I had this crazy idea that we could have students coming up to speed on programming during the build season. Just doesn't happen... things are hectic during build season. No one had time to learn anything so after build season a student asked if I could run an off-season class to help prepare them for next year. I have been running off-season programming classes for our students every year since then. This has proven very useful, in fact at this point I think more than 50% of the kids on the team have taken the class even though most do not end up doing software for the robot.
It is not an extensive class (like you would expect in a high school or college programming course) where I cover every aspect of the language and programming. Not sure what language you are using, we use C++ so I bring them up to speed on the language facilities we generally make use of especially classes and the implementation of things like state machines... and also the architecture our team uses in creating our code. It is fast-paced, intensive, hands-on class done in 6 weeks and it gives them a flavor of what is to come. And it gives me an idea of who is really interested and what their abilities are.
Each student does the short exercises in C++ [using Visual Studio Express (which is free)] on a laptop during class time so that they are able to learn from their mistakes and get a general feel for how to use a debugger, compiler, etc. During our last class we review a few classes from the previous year's code so that they have some idea of what the actual robot code entails. I have a set of powerpoint presentations that I have developed over the years that I use to stay on track as well as providing a reference for them in the future.