Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
I still think you're missing the point of a Beta Test program.
Any team could have used the 2009 FRC software to practice programming and gotten as much or more out of it than the 2010 Beta Testers. They could have focused on using the system and getting useful results. Anything added or changed for the upcoming year won't take away the benefit of that practice.
The teams involved have spent significant effort using tools that were just short of ready, finding and overcoming obstacles, documenting (and often correcting) errors, redoing work when updates occurred, exploring use cases that weren't considered by the developers, troubleshooting problems with the libraries, helping to make the documentation useful, and generally making it possible for the rest of the teams to get a system that works well out of the box.
What these "privileged" teams have done over the past few months is only slightly relevant to what they will have to do after Kickoff. I don't think working with the unfinished software has given them a significant leg up on everyone else, and I know their work is going to give everyone else a better experience than they would have had otherwise.
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No. I believe you are missing the point of my post.
According to Bills blog, 43 teams were set up as beta testers (Sept 3), yet the OP states that only 7 teams have provided results. Most of which does not include specifics about the changes in FPGA code or how much editing it will take to convert their labview/C++ code to Java (Things that at least 20 of the beta teams have done).
My suggestion in my previous post was not an indictment of the teams, but rather a suggestion that we look at open sourcing the libraries to all of the FIRST teams and see what comes of it.
My question back to you is: If there is nothing gained by having the software, then why are you so against opening up the beta process to all teams?