Quote:
Originally Posted by kamocat
What do coaches expect of programmers?
What should coaches expect of programmers?
|
Like i said in your other thread... That depends on the team. If your programmers haven't done any programming in the past, keep it simple and expect to spend most of the time teaching. If they know what they're doing... keep it simple, and expect to spend most of the time improving on the simple start you know is working. One of the most important things to remember is the more complex you make something, the easier it is to break - the same is true about code. Our first goal every single build season is to get it working as simply as possible. Once that's accomplished, then we can start playing around with the camera, or with additional sensors, or feed back loops or whatever we feel is needed that year.
Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest. A great example of this comes from 2008 for our team. One of the students wrote our autonomous mode as simply as possible - drive forward for x seconds, turn left for x seconds, drive forward for x seconds... and it worked pretty reliably, almost always getting us 3-4 lines. Later that summer, we decided to redo it with PID loops... and never got it working.
As mentors, we need to be able to judge the teams limits, and set attainable goals.