[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Covey41

As someone who has written a lot of software, I would like to know how many people have written a complicated piece of software (Such as the scoring system.) and had it work correctly the first time it is used. Just look at Windows and most versions of Linux. Everyone of these has had major bugs that were only fixed over time. As was said before, there is no way to test a system as complicated as this, without testing it at an event such as a regional. Scrimmages are good, but they just don't put the same load on a program as a regional.

I completely disagree. It is not the teams causing the problems. It is not the teams' controls causing the problems. It is not even the robots causing the problems. It is the field setup. Whether or not there are 60 teams in the company of the field should not have an impact on whether the field is testable or not.

Many people say, it is the first time they've run it; give them a break.

Well, there's your problem. The first week of regionals should not be the first use of the scoring software and field system. Those first-week teams deserve a good regional just like everyone else. FIRST should be testing the arena and scoring software several times well before hand so it runs well the first time it is needed.

If that means rasing the registration fee so FIRST can hire a couple more peope to test out the arena before the regionals, then so be it.

EDIT: I forgot to note that FIRST is not entirelty to blame. There are also a couple 3rd party companies as I understand. But that just means that FIRST needs to get on them for not delivering a working product.