Quote:
Originally Posted by ZackAlfakir
... as a Student, I actually teach all of the lower classmen how to program. As someone with 3 years of experience, I actually don't touch the robot code for the most part, and instead I help all of the other kids understand how to do their part ...
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I can appreciate your position; as a student on 11, I taught underclassmen to use Solidworks, as well as basic machining. Programming was the same, upperclassmen teaching underclassmen. There are limitations though. When I started gearbox design for example, VEXpro didn't exist, WCP was in its very early stages. Everything I learned I either taught myself using wikipedia articles, or asked mentors on teams with more experience.
Older students teaching younger students is an elegant, mutually beneficial dynamic that should be encouraged whenever possible but as I said above, there are limitations. I taught Solidworks, but I wasn't CSWA certified and there were professional conventions I knew nothing about from teaching myself.
I don't doubt that when you get to college (assuming you are doing Comp. Sci.), you will be ahead of the majority of your peers. You can't claim though to have the depth of knowledge to teach other students to write camera code for a 5 ball 2012 auton that is 85% accurate. If you could write code that could get you 70% of the way there, and have a mentor assist and debug the remaining 30% to get it working, would you honestly say "No, I don't want that. A mentor helping me would devalue the learning experience more than the gained knowledge and inspiration from winning could offset"?
I don't mean to come across as snarky, just consider the effects on the student base in each hypothetical situation before deciding one is better.