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Unread 23-12-2009, 11:45
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RobotPy Guy
AKA: Dustin Spicuzza
FRC #1418 (), FRC #1973, FRC #4796, FRC #6367 ()
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 1,032
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Re: Improving the experience of programmers and the effectiveness of code

Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle View Post
I think this is a good summary looking to the future. The thing that could probably be stated more directly would be to allow programming to proceed without the robot. In my book that means test harnesses so that code logic can be validated more quickly and more safely somewhat independent of the robot. After all, NASA rarely launches another rocket just so the programmers can see if they've fixed a bug.
Agreed. The most frustrating thing for me last year at the beginning of the season was the fact that the C++ stuff *had* to be run on the robot, and so it made it really annoying to do anything really significant to the code without any *easy* way to test it. In particular, I don't have 24/7 access to the facility where our team has the robot, so most of the coding I did last year I ended up doing at home, because we simply don't have enough time to do it in the time we meet at the school -- and I can't bring the robot home!

I ended up building a reasonably nice GUI test harness for WPILib/C++ that allows you to run your robot program on a desktop (Windows or Linux) and stimulate various inputs and view the outputs. More information and download links at: http://www.virtualroadside.com/blog/...ness-released/.
__________________
Maintainer of RobotPy - Python for FRC
Creator of pyfrc (Robot Simulator + utilities for Python) and pynetworktables/pynetworktables2js (NetworkTables for Python & Javascript)

2017 Season: Teams #1973, #4796, #6369
Team #1418 (remote mentor): Newton Quarterfinalists, 2016 Chesapeake District Champion, 2x Innovation in Control award, 2x district event winner
Team #1418: 2015 DC Regional Innovation In Control Award, #2 seed; 2014 VA Industrial Design Award; 2014 Finalists in DC & VA
Team #2423: 2012 & 2013 Boston Regional Innovation in Control Award


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