Programming teams

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

1 person with 8 years of programming experience, another with 6 years(me), and I am not sure about the third one, but he is one brilliant fellow. There are the other stragglers that really never did anything at all.

I will be training up 3 freshmen, we will actually have female programmers next year .

You are going to teach them all to abuse if then statements like proper programmers should right?

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by MagiChau

You are going to teach them all to abuse if then statements like proper programmers should right?

Actually, I am almost scared of if statements with more than 3 if then statements. I try to keep them at 2 or under. Or, in fact, even eliminate them. Well personally I think that comes with experience. Or it might just be my strange personality. I try to find that one equation that can do a whole bunch of if then statements can do. That is why I had so many feuds with the other programmer; he tries to code high level and I try to code the lowest level I can.

I think programming styles differ from one person to another. I was a if then statement spammer in my earlier years; but I just changed somehow. But I always stay away from recursive functions or anything like that. My mind functions more efficiently with equations rather than whatever you call recursive functions.

edit: This is what I mean; my drive code:

if(y <= pow(x, 2)/3 + 0.2 && y >= pow(x, 2)/-3 - 0.2)//pow is x^2 It is the dead zone for zero point turning. We can live with the else statement. 
{
pwm1 = x * 127 + 128;
pwm2 = x * 127 + 128;
}
else
{
pwm1 = (pow(y, 3) * 127 + 128) + (pow(x, 3) * 70);//x^3
pwm2 = (pow(y, 3) * 127 + 128) - (pow(x, 3) * 70);
}
regulate();//Just makes sure it does not go out of range

[Anupam Goli]

Our team has 2 programmers (me and one other person), and I am also the electronics person (wired the robot myself). No mentors. We also have 1 other person who is not a programmer, but is very good at math who usually derives the math equations, and we write them into algorithms. (we have a ridiculous double jointed arm that would extend the 84" perimeter, so we had to derive an equation that took two angles and constantly checked if the position of the arm was out of bounds).

I'll train a junior next year before I leave, but I sort of feel proud that i did the wiring and half the programming myself. I had no documentation other than standard FRC documentation and the previous year leader left almost nothing to go off other than the completed robot (with no sensors or anything other than a compressor and 4 pwm jags) and half-working code.

[taichichuan]

Our team has 2 mentors and 8-10 students. We use SVN and google groups for collaboration. We've been pretty lucky this year with some good code written by the students and the opportunity to test major subsystems before the robot shipped. Still lots of code that needs to be tested before the New Orleans Regional, but at least there is code for most of the systems that has sort of been tested.

We write in C++. Unfortunately, most of our students had little or no experience in writing code when we started the pre-season. We spent the first several months of the school year teaching them coding concepts, variable types, control structures and giving them test problems that could be run on their PCs. We also went through all of the control systems, sensors types and how they interact. It was a lot of work, but most of the students stepped up to the plate.

Fortunately, only a couple of the students are seniors. So, with any luck, we'll get several of them back for next season.

[Businessman41]

Our team has three members in the computer/electronics squad. I am the only one who has consistently come, and therefore am the only one who knows how everything works as a whole. Therefore, I do all the programming and the other two watch and provide insite and point out mistakes I miss.