[GeeTwo]

I concur with the general consensus that switching to a non-supported language halfway through build season is not a good idea.

Another big question here regards team dynamics. If your team is at the "mentor-driven" end of the spectrum, switching based on mentor preference may make sense. If your team is in the middle or towards the "student-driven" end of the FRC spectrum, any changes to accommodate a specific mentor's skills or style should have been hashed out long before build season started.

For the record, we run (as we understand it) a bit on the student side of the middle. We start each summer with a largely mentor-run off-season build, with the understanding that we hand off responsibility to students as they demonstrate that they can handle it. By the end of the first week of build season, we have mentors suggesting ideas and even vetoing a few ideas, but the control shifts increasingly to the students according to their drive and abilities. We have not had an adult drive coach since about halfway through our first regional of our rookie year. On the other hand, I was using the drill press in my garage this afternoon to make some prototype bits of hardware to test out during tomorrow's build session. Even if the idea works out, the parts I drilled today will not be on the competition robot; our internal goal is that every piece on the competitive robot is either made in house by a student or out-sourced to NASA (and we have a limited machine budget there).