[Mike Copioli]

Thanks for the kudos Tom.

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Picking up a hammer or a drill are life-skills, not just engineering skills, and a lot of the kids coming into FIRST have never even put a drill bit in a chuck due to their suburban - urban lifestyle and the throw-away mentality a lot of people have nowadays. I can definitely see an argument where the mechanical side of FIRST is more applicable for a larger subset of people.

The mechanical world is tangible.
The electrical world is abstract.
The programming world is lonely and misunderstood however sometimes the keyboard is mightier than the drill!

I prefer a combination of all of the above. As far as the life skills argument is concerned these are my thoughts; Many times when a friend or family member is in need of help with a project it is my soldering iron or oscilloscope that is required not my lathe or hammer. Hey can I borrow your truck to move has turned into hey can you fix my kids X-box. What does this tell you? It tells me that in a throw-away world these people are not willing to throw away these devices. But they lack the skills or know-how to make the repairs themselves. often times they even provide me with a link to a site that tells you EXACTLY how to fix the problem but because they are intimidated by the size and misconceived fragility of the components they seek help from others who CAN. Although taking a hammer to it might make you feel a lot better it will not fix your kids X-box. I believe that everything that you use through life regardless of the frequency is a life skill. When I was in high school i did not realize until my junior year that I had an aptitude for electronics. The primary reason......People were showing me how to use hammers instead of soldering irons. Then one day I saw a device that intrigued me. I had no idea how it worked. I found myself in a position that required me to solicit the help of others. The person I found was the high schools electronic teacher. The next year I enrolled in his class. The rest is history.

One argument that I will agree with is that the robot requires more "Manpower" to deal with the mechnical aspects then the electrical/programming.