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Originally Posted by tribotec_ca88
Even though I am in favor of extending the autonomous mode time, I can imagine that this would be an uninteresting move to make when we consider all of these teams that have no programmers...is that what we want? To leave them in disadvantage? Or to inspire students to expand their knowledge in autonomous programming? Well... what is FIRST's objective, exactly? To turn FRC into a battle-bot game or an "AI" sort of contest?
What do you think?
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You bring up a key point to remember. These are supposed to be STUDENT built machines, and many High Schools don't have any real courses in programming, much less in C. The added pressure of Autonomus Mode results in Mentors such as myself doing a great deal of programming when we would/should be spending our time teaching the students.
Not that the concept of Autonomous Mode is at fault, but the lack of effective and easily configured software tools means that we are often working from the ground up. Kevin has made a great effort this year tward solving this issue, but the documentation was minimal, and it was difficult to figure out what his code was trying to do at times. We need a well documented set of tools (a written explanation of exactly how the function accomplishes it's task, flow charts, algorithms, state diagrams, etc.) that can be EASILY adapted, and be used to teach our students.
It would also help if IFI would clean up their code a bit so the default software isn't so cluttered. It's a bit overwhelming when a kid who's never written a program sees the default code for the first time. Most just get discouraged and walk away. An example would be to hide most of the initialization and just make us change (for example) the pin directions we want as outputs, or the baud rate on the TTL Serial Port. Also, give us a better I/O library! We've only got 6 weeks, and a kid shouldn't have to learn how to build a buffer simply to get a character from the camera!
Steve