[Jake M]

It is true that the programming system is far too extensive to learn within six weeks. For experienced teams, that's not a problem, because in the past four years, the only changes that have been made were tweaking and debugging. For new teams, that's a different story. The only advice I can really offer is that of all the info you'll find in the documentation, you'll only ever use maybe 10% of it. IFI does take care of a LOT of stuff for you, so you don't really have to worry about it.

I've read a good deal of the documentation myself, little by little over the years, so I have a fairly good idea of what the controller is capable of, but I've never read them too far in-depth. I'd recommend the same to you, at least until the main season's over. As much as possible, use the default stuff IFI provides and utilize resources like the IFI Default Code Manual, Kevin Watson's stuff (as if that hasn't been said enough already), and particularly this site. There's always someone here knolwedgable and willing enough to answer questions, or at least show you where to find the solution. Plus, odds are someone's already asked most of your questions before.

And I agree with you on the EasyC point. When they introduced EasyC after my first two years of just straight C, I gave it a shot and found myself confused to no end. I eventually worked out a few basics, but found that it was just so much easier to use straight C, and in the end, the code produced was smaller and more efficient. Besides, C isn't the hard part of programming the FRC or FVC controller. The hard part, like you said, is integrating what you know with the hardware specifics of the PIC controller.