[nate12345678]

As a novice on this website, I have never really drawn an interest until I saw this thread. This is been one of the most interesting threads I've seen anywhere.

Now, as I have now been a programmer for FRC for two years, I think I might be able to offer some observations on this subject. On the Mechanical/Electrical opinion, they are absolutely correct. Small mechanical changes can absolutely make a huge difference, from flipping cans on your mentor to stacking 3 6-stacks capped in a match. However, this change won't be any good if the code is inefficient for the driver. Sometimes, automatically doing multi-step tasks can reduce your time at the feeder by 10 seconds a stack. I think part of the reason programmers get so restless and irritated by mechanical is the fact that it takes about 2-3 weeks to finish the first iteration of the code, but 12 weeks to make a robot mechanically ready for champs. Programmers maybe get one hour a week to test on a robot, but what about the other 20+ hours? This seems like a major issue for our programming team. More people need to spend time working on extra-robot programming. I spent the entire season working on our scouting application, and I must say that it was one of the best programming experiences I've ever had.

tldr everything part of making a robot necessary, programmers need things to do when not testing.