Quote:
Originally Posted by pyroslev
But if you insist on a test before competition to see if they're ready, try this one on for size. 
- Put them in a room with a robot, robot control system not even imaged. (Simulating swapped C/RoboRIO)
- Give them laptop with the IDE on it with the most basic template for the language you're using. (Simulate programming laptop having died)
- Give them one hour. (About the average time between matches at competition)
To completely pass it, they must reprogram said robot to be as close to competition ready as possible. If a student programmer can complete the above and the possible drive team be able to be competitive with the robot, then that student has earned their weight in pizza. |
I'm going to resurrect this older thread, because I was reading through it and this post made me laugh... this is pretty much exactly what happened to me as a new mentor!
At my first meeting they said "So, you're interested in helping with programming? Cool, go see [mentor]". He handed me a package he had just received that day... a set of I2C addressable LED strip lights, an Arduino board, and a power supply. My directions? "Take [students] and make this work!"
In the remaining hour and a half I had to find a laptop, download the Arduino IDE, drivers and sample code for the LED strips, figure out how to wire it all up, debug a wiring problem (turns out the power supply connector polarity was backwards!) and... yes... we made it work!
On my way out another mentor shook my hand and said "Well, you did pretty fantastically for your first time out!"