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Originally Posted by gblake
Help me out folks, if a team's software isn't made public, isn't it supposed to be rewritten from scratch every year?
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Yes. The rules usually state this fairly early on in the manual. I think Frank even made a post telling teams this rule early so people would publish it.
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And even if all of a team's software is made public from year to year, isn't the general notion of the annual FRC learning experience that software, like the physical robot, will be largely developed anew, during the season, each year? I realize that there is a broad spectrum is ways teams actually do their software development; but isn't the clean sheet of paper, plus some true of the shelf code, short-of the big picture thrust of the rules?
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Yes, new software is supposed to be written each year. The real question is what new software
needs to be written. A number of teams, from my general impression, will start essentially from scratch each year. I believe this may contribute to the problem. Since most teams don't/can't reuse the code from the previous year, they have to start from what they know, and usually without help. It's like asking a designer to CAD up a drivebase who doesn't necessarily know what goes into a drivebase. Yeah, it might work, but it's probably really heavy, slow, and doesn't turn well.
By comparison, other teams will reuse the framework from the previous year, and adapt it to the new robot. It's like starting the season with enough COTS parts to build a drivebase, and the parts increase in quality and quantity each year. Is it ready for competition? No. Does it save development time, allowing programmers to work on other things? Yes. Is their an easily available framework for teams to use? Not really, at least not now. You could borrow code from teams like 254 or 236 who post their code every year, or try and use the scripting languages I've seen 1902, 987, and 4334 post (I think those teams have did that in the past).