[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by sircedric4

So maybe I missed it, but it seems that a VAST majority of the teams have a hard enough time getting their robot to just move forward and do one small thing during autonomous. How exactly would you do this challenge and still keep it rookie friendly?

Are we talking about seriously canned code here with simple GUI interfaces. For example I had a toy when I was a kid called a Big Track where you programmed what you wanted it to do, then activated it and watched it. It only had certain moves it could do and it was programmed from a small keypad. The point is that it had canned algorithms that required nothing but parameters. Unless someone comes up with code this simple I just can't see FIRST going full autonomous.

Now if the powerhouse teams are bored with their standard coding, maybe there can be an advanced FIRST like event at the college level that could do this kind of stuff. I have a hard enough time getting any of my students to even program teleop and that's easy compared to the 15 second autonomous mode. Now tell them the robot can't even compete unless they put a mars rover amount of code into it and I won't have any students left.

Now really is that true? I mean if a programmer has any idea what he is doing, he can get the drive working just by looking at the API... I think new programmers don't look at APIs but more towards step by step applications of it like a tutorial...

Actually I believe you, there is this one "programmer" that has no idea what he is doing, and all he knows is if statements... Doesnt even know what a variable is really...