Programming Retrospective

[JohnGilb]

So, you LabVIEW using teams... after another great season of competition, we have some downtime to take a look at our code and think about what went wrong and, well, what went right!

As for us...

Right:
-Key constants on the robot were read from text files on the cRIO, making it easy to modify robot parameters without re-downloading code
-We achieved a high degree of encapsulation, allowing for easier code reuse and distributed workloads in the programming team
-We finally started using source control, which allowed for distributed work as well as all the other benefits

Wrong:
-Our system architecture had sensors "owned" by the systems that used them the most, but sometimes other systems needed to know their state too. This led to some messy compromises.
-Our logging system didn't capture enough data to debug an issue after-the-fact.
-It was difficult to test individual systems, or even individual components (such as turning a single valve off or on) without running debug code, making it difficult to verify repairs or changes to the physical robot.

So, what have you learned this year?