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Unread 16-09-2008, 01:14
Tom Bottiglieri Tom Bottiglieri is offline
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Re: should there be a award for programming skill?

Quote:
Originally Posted by drewjones13 View Post
I am a just out of high school and into college student. I have been in first for 3 years going on 4. When I was in a FIRST team, I was able to perform mathematics at all levels required to do any programming and engineering tasks needed for any situation. My backgrounds in mathematics, physics, and engineering are at the high school level with AP Calculus, AP Physics, and Drafting as well as other engineering classes. I believe that high school students can perform this kind of mathematics and convey it clearly. I was also able to convey all that I needed to say about situations without extra effort. Many of the control theories can be performed without needed in the differential equations. I find it hard to understand that this is supposedly impossible for high school students to do this properly when in FIRST the students are the ones who design and create these systems. Which that proves my point of students having enough background in mathematics to produce profession quality by utilizing out of the box methods of interface with newer technology such as Wii-motes, glove interfaces and popular controllers like the Xbox 360 controllers.
Most of these solutions (I can only speak for the ones I have seen, as I have not seen the guts of every project out there) are either copies or hacks. While I'm sure the students grasped how their (most likely linear) equations operated, the concepts behind them were most likely skimmed over, if used at all. It really takes a college U-Grad level or above mathematics education to develop any kind of sustainable piece of software, especially in a field like control systems that deals with such a great amount of signal processing.

Last edited by Tom Bottiglieri : 16-09-2008 at 01:19.
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