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Unread 16-09-2008, 21:29
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Re: should there be a award for programming skill?

Quote:
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.
I realize that some schools offer all of these classes that you speak of, but thats just it, some do not all. Case in point, my school, for almost 50 years it has been recognized as the best in the city's district, it has turned out many very successful and famous people clear across the board. Keeping all this in mind, the only AP class offered in the school itself is AP Lit. the highest level math class offered this year is Pre-Calc. The only class in relation to engineering is Physics. We have no draft class, no mechanics class, no programming class, no CAD.

My point is, you can't take your high school experience and set that as being the standard clear across the country. I can confidently say that all of our teams members come in missing some piece of vital knowledge needed in the field of engineering or programming, but they leave with the knowledge they lacked, and then some. To me, that is the main goal of FIRST, to get students interested in these fields, give them the knowledge they need to be successful in them, and give them real life experience in complex problem solving.

Now, as to the topic of this discussion. The only way I would be able to agree to such an award is if there were some grading system that takes into consideration that programming is a dynamic field. That is, there is NO 1 way to do 1 thing. Shoot, there are more ways to figure out one problem than people that know how to figure them out. I think that the awards should stay focused on the end result, that is, how well is the code making the robot do what it is supposed instead of how well is the code supposed to make the robot do what it is supposed to do.
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