Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
Trying to negotiate robot time between hardware and software maintenance tasks was always more, um, interesting than it needed to be.
|
Welcome to the world of being a FIRST programmer. Where software development happens in the same fashion as a Big Mac at McDonald's. Let's only hope your code has less fat
This year my the mechanicals were becoming annoyed with what was being accomplished in the pits. I claimed, "We have to write, test, debug, test, debug, test, repeat until new functionality is added." We can't just write something and expect it to run. When I took a stopwatch and recorded the amount of time we were able to test software on the robot, the time came to less than 10 minutes between matches.
It's important to stress that software development requires testing and tweaking. It usually takes about 20 minutes of writing (which can be done standalone), and then 20 minutes of tweaking which requires you to have access to your robot. If you don't get enough time, use a stop watch.
It's very common to lose track of time while working on the robot so it's important to know exactly how much time is being alloted to tasks. Show the appropriate person, your pit chief for example, and tell him I had X amount of time, and really need to have more time to get the job done right.