Quote:
Originally Posted by efoote868
Getting autonomous to work is about as much of a challenge as finding the appropriate tutorial.
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And I think this statement is the fundamental problem. I have been mentoring for 5 years now, and if there's one thing I have learned about FIRST it is that finding the documentation, the tutorials and examples is the single biggest obstacle to overcome.
Every year, I show my students the 19 different websites they need to go to to find programming knowledge, the updates for the software, etc... I have yet to have a single student overcome that website scavenger hunt enough to program adequately. Many are bright kids, but let's face it, we are a society that only goes to the instruction manual after we have blown the product up. Make that instruction manual difficult to find, and the students won't even try.
If you really want to help the non-autonomous teams to get there, without the aforementioned mentor instruction, then somebody really needs to make a SINGLE repository of ALL the data, manuals and software. Index that data so anyone can find what they are looking for, and make no assumptions! Pretend that the person trying to program doesn't know what a class or method is, has never heard of C++ or Labview, doesn't know how to install the software, and make your tutorials start at that level.
Eliminate the scavenger hunt, stop updating the software every two seconds, and make sure your examples and tutorials work. That will help a majority of the people I feel.