[efoote868]

One thing I've learned in school is that black boxes are better than clear ones.

I know that a two input NAND gate is made up of four transistors, and a latch is made up of a couple NAND gates, and a flip flop is made up of more NAND gates, and a shift register is made up of a few flip flops.... and on and on and on.

When you want to make your robot drive forward, its pretty much irrelevant to know those facts, even though they are the basis for all things programming.


A good example is a gyro - I have vague ideas about how it works, but that's neither here nor there. I know it works, I can use it without hesitation.
My robot spinning exactly 45 degrees shouldn't depend on me knowing the inner workings of that sensor.

Further abstract it. Pretty much every year they give teams the KOP, and in it they include transmissions and wheels. Why should you have to fabricate a wheel if a perfectly good one is available to you? Why should you be required to spend hours designing a transmission if a perfectly good one is available to you?

No one says you have to use it. No one says "you must use the camera and the code that comes with it". Go ahead, redo it yourself. You'll gain knowledge, and frustration from it, and you might come out with a better product and an advantage to all the other teams.

To summarize: "pre-canned" code is helping all teams.