Quote:
Originally Posted by matan129
I don't quite agree with you. Although I think autonomous shouldn't fully determine the winner of the match - it is no fun knowing who'd win after 15 seconds - I must say the programming in FRC is in general almost trivial.
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So, to wrap up - yes, it may be better to let the auto be a little less crucial but programming must be kicked up a notch.
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Alright. So what do you want from teams? What do you expect?
My team didn't get a programming mentor until our 6th year as a team. And yet we had placed second place at multiple competitions beforehand - many factors were involved in us ending second place rather than first, and while programming was one of them, it was never the predominant factor as to why. We taught ourselves everything we could about control systems, and we actually never got PID fully functional until a programming mentor joined the team - even with 3-4 programmers, one of which is now at an Ivy for CS, so it isn't like we're struggling to build the code.
When kids aren't taught Calculus until junior (2 years ahead of schedule) or senior year (1 year ahead), it's kinda difficult to introduce advanced control systems in addition to learning the ins and outs of coding a robot. Coding a robot is far different than your standard software programming, which is what we are taught in our CS classes offered here.
Sure, it may seem simple to write driveTrain.drivePID.setXDistance(4.0), but it isn't that simple when you're just starting out. In addition to a plethora of other factors going on within the team - for example, we spent a very long time on design this year - it's not really simple to just magically develop a brand new, state of the art, never-before-seen control system.