Quote:
Originally Posted by Billfred
Not just blogs, mind you--teams are being required to open up their shops to other teams (where one can see things up close, often by necessity if your shop's anything like mine), hold a Saturday workshop (another opportunity to see everything up close), and release all their code (which not only lets me see what they've done on my own time, but gives me a chance to turn their own firepower against them come regionals). It certainly appears that FIRST is doing everything within their power to minimize the competitive advantage these teams could receive. I don't know how one could get an edge on it, short of cheating.
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I know that the teams that are picked will do all they can to help other teams, but the nature of getting things first is that it's an advantage (and an unfair one at that).
Open up their shops? -- Yes they will do this, but seeing a robot/program run and getting a few questions answered vs actually programming it with the nuances of a specific controller are 2 different things. And it's the little things that those teams overcome that will be 'missed' by the teams that don't get that advantage.
Saturday workshops? -- 4 hours in a lecture/lab on a Saturday does not make up for 3+ hours Monday-Friday getting the thing running.
Release all the code? -- Does this include competition code? all the code from now til doomsay? or just until others get the RC? and when does this code have to be released by? getting code that runs on one machine does not mean that it will run on another without knowlege of why it runs (which the veteran teams are getting that knowlege, and the others aren't) and what will need to be modified.
Basically what I'm saying is that
FIRST is basically telling 1st and 2nd year teams that they are not good enough to help the community, because they are new. And when you exclude some group from helping, you hurt everyone.
Again, I want to state that I know these teams will do what they can to help others ... but that doesn't change the fact that they are being given an advantage and that
FIRST is deliberately excluding groups that may want to help.