The Meaning of FIRST

[WMFlip16]

Hello,

I am a junior on team 2137 and have been involved in FIRST since I was on an FLL team in 2008. We recently had our first competition of the year at Waterford and did ok. On our second day of the competetion, me and my dad went in early because i had some work to do with my code. We moved into the cafeteria and I started debugging the code and adjusting things. After a while, some mentors came in and sat down at a table and began talking. They talked of things that needed to change, which I have no problem with, and how they could improve it. The part that i had a problem with was when a mentor started talking about what HE had changed, and what HE had did, which bugged me. It also bugged me that the team won an award for their programming.

This brings up a question.
Is this your team? Is winning more important than learning? Is it really helping inspire or teach students? So please mentors, let us do all the work, Its better that way. Maybe you too can win the award titled "I dont do anything" like our programming mentor did.

Sincerely, A Peeved Programmer

[EricH]

Originally Posted by WMFlip16

So please mentors, let us do all the work, Its better that way.

Please be VERY, VERY, VERY careful about how you say this. I may agree that it may need to be said at times and places, but in general the saying of it tends to produce a very nasty flame war. Particularly when it is phrased in the general format of "I was at a competition and heard someone on another team say or observed another team doing". Particularly if it is relatively simple to figure out which team it was.


Signed,
A Person Who Has Seen the Above Happen.

P.S. I do suggest looking at FIRST's Vision and Mission statements, which are available on their site under "About Us". A short look may suggest that FIRST does not necessarily consider it better that the students do all the work, and will in addition answer some possible questions about the meaning of FIRST.

[DonRotolo]

What Eric said.

Inspiration and recognition does not equal "advanced shop class". What's better for your team is not better for all teams. Remember that.

[Jay Trzaskos]

Just a note, there are 2,534 teams registered and competing in FRC this year. That means that there are 2,533 teams being run in a manner entirely different than your own.

"it's not my team therefore it's not my right, responsibility, or job to judge how they operate"

Being inspired is a lot like learning, not everybody does it the same way.

[JM033]

Last year in the pits I asked a good team how they programmed a certain aspect of their bot, and they didn't have a clue. I sincerely don't think they even knew what language they were programming in. How is this even possible?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by JM033

Last year in the pits I asked a good team how they programmed a certain aspect of their bot, and they didn't have a clue. I sincerely don't think they even knew what language they were programming in. How is this even possible?

You may have asked the mechanical subteam. Maybe the electrical subteam, though they could be reasonably expected to know at least the language. Programming, by nature, can be done almost anywhere (testing cannot, for some strange reason), so it's entirely possible the programmers were elsewhere and not available to answer the question.

[JM033]

Originally Posted by EricH

You may have asked the mechanical subteam. Maybe the electrical subteam, though they could be reasonably expected to know at least the language. Programming, by nature, can be done almost anywhere (testing cannot, for some strange reason), so it's entirely possible the programmers were elsewhere and not available to answer the question.

Although you could be right, I'm pretty sure I asked the programmers. They were in front of their laptops fiddling around with usb/ethernet cables..don't think they were mechanical.

[NotaJoke]

This whole argument is unhealthy, but I am going to be hypocritical and argue my point none the less.

Originally Posted by JM033

Last year in the pits I asked a good team how they programmed a certain aspect of their bot, and they didn't have a clue. I sincerely don't think they even knew what language they were programming in. How is this even possible?

You are so quick to judge an entire team based on the knowledge of a few members. I know absolutely nothing about programming, because I do CAD, Machining, Strategy, and Chairman's. There are not enough hours in the week for me to understand programming (and I just don't like it). Perhaps the team you were talking to only had mechanical students in the pits, or their programmers were having a meeting somewhere else in the building. I don't think it's fair nor productive to challenge said team's success or build process with such limited information.

Actually, even if you had more information I'm not sure you can judge the students for not programming. If there is a team of 10 students and none want to program or have interest in programming, should this team not use other resources in order to have the most successful robot possible?

I did not mean to offend, but sounded very offensive. I believe that the time effort and emotion put into a robot justifies its method of creation. As a senior who only had two years with FIRST, I understand the importance of inspiration, but also hope I can continue to take an active role in a team in the future despite my age or field of interest. Generally every team has a reason for its structure, and finds the solution it has for a reason, and not by pure accident.

[JM033]

If there is a team of 10 students and none want to program or have interest in programming, should this team not use other resources in order to have the most successful robot possible?

No, they already have enough adequate resources. Coming from a team with 2 programmers, I believe even 4 programmers is a fair amount. Why would one like to join the programming subteam if they didn't even have any interest? If you need more resources because you are unable to provide ANYTHING yourself, it's just pure laziness and unwillingness then. You wouldn't learn anything if you had others do your work for you. This team had adequate amount of programmers, but seemed to fail to use them for the "success of a great bot".

[James1902]

I've read many threads on this topic but never commented, for various reasons, but I feel I can respond to this particular thread because I feel the title lends itself to my point.

The Meaning of FIRST: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

FIRST is not about teaching, it's not about learning, it's not about educating and it's not about instructing. It is a program whose main focus is on inspiring students. Inspiration is literally the name of the game.

Now, i'm not saying that learning doesn't happen. In fact I believe I personally have learned more during my participation in FIRST then in many of my classes, but that's a happy side effect and not the main goal.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by JM033

If there is a team of 10 students and none want to program or have interest in programming, should this team not use other resources in order to have the most successful robot possible?

No, they already have enough adequate resources. Coming from a team with 2 programmers, I believe even 4 programmers is a fair amount. Why would one like to join the programming subteam if they didn't even have any interest? If you need more resources because you are unable to provide ANYTHING yourself, it's just pure laziness and unwillingness then. You wouldn't learn anything if you had others do your work for you. This team had adequate amount of programmers, but seemed to fail to use them for the "success of a great bot".

J and OP, you don't know the full story.

Mentoring is HARD. Even if you come from being on an FRC team in high school and then mentor, it is incredibly hard for any mentor to judge and gauge when and where they need to step in to get something done.

I personally no longer care who does what on a team because it is not my place to judge. I used to say the same things as you until I started mentoring. Don't be so quick to judge, once you (if you do) begin to mentor a team, you will also learn how difficult a task it is to know when to step in and when you need to let students or some aspect of the robot fail in order to teach the students.

With that said, I always dislike these threads because people don't fully think things through before making the thread. It is always easy to quickly get upset about a perceived situation, but take the time to think things out before judging a team.

[spikeman62]

I think the argument you are making is just based on too small of a sample size. This point has been made, but there are over 2500 teams in FIRST, they all aren't going to run how you want. That's just not how FIRST works. There are many different ways to "skin the cat" that is, building a robot and more importantly, inspiring students. And believe me when I say that many teams do not have the adequate resources to have depth at every level of the engineering process.

On my team until recently, we were lucky to have 10 kids on the team. And really only about five of those were dedicated and came almost every day. Many of us didn't have a engineering background so we needed our mentors to step up and teach us what we didn't know. Yes that meant sometimes they had to machine a part or do some of the coding but that didn't mean we were incapable or that they weren't letting us do anything, they just had the experience. We did our fair share of the work and the mentors did theirs. The combination of the two is what gets the robot done in six weeks. I can honestly say that without my mentors, I wouldn't be where I am today or have the knowledge of engineering that I have. They have taught me so many lessons, not just about robots, but about life. They have truly inspired me.

I can tell you the high majority of mentors are there for the greater good to inspire and teach you. I think you're letting one mentor skew your entire image of what a mentor truly is.

[faust1706]

FIRST for me is getting to opportunity to learn from the smartest people I know, the mentors. They made it a point this year to be hands off on design, build, and programming. Our teacher sponsor and a team member's mom assembled our bumpers this year. The students got all the material and cut the wood, they assembled it. Anyways, a mentor I worked very close with is an engineer at Boeing. He showed me the ropes of programming last year, and told me to have at it. This year was a little more structured, he knew where the program needed to go, told me, and I had to figure out how to get it there. I feel this was a great system for learning, because if I ever had an questions concerning my programming logic, we would take to the whiteboard, where anyone was welcome to try and point out flaws with us. He's done more for me that taught me how to program a Kinect. He's INSPIRED me to learn programming on my own. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be asking why and how, I'd be playing LoL. Now, I do both XD

[Tungrus]

In our team students do most of the things. Mentors do purchasing, scheduling and paper work and software setup on laptop/netbook. Students come up with design, have sub-teams review with mentor and other sub-team. Discuss alternate approach, decide on what we can do in 6 weeks, decide on nice to have features. Get to work, fabricate and assemble, we have basic tools, does not require much training. When mentor sees something may not work, he will gather the team discuss the potential problem and guide in possible solution. If he has no answer, we sleep on it for a later day. Our aim is not to win and go to championship, if we can design and build something is ready to compete, we will be proud. We win some matches and lose some...its life. When we get award, we thank judges for recognizing our efforts. We too come from FLL background our mentors then guided us to do everything, the followed FLL by book. No complaints. This is who we are.

[connor.worley]

To quote JVN at a workshop, "There are years when I've designed the entire robot, and years when I've never touched the CAD mouse. It all depends on what the students are capable of, and how far they want to take their skills." (probably some exaggeration here, but you get the point). Our team has two people who can write code, one being me and the other being a mentor. Outside of competition, the programming work is a joint effort, but during competition, I work in the stands to help with scouting. This means that during competition, all programming changes are made by our mentor. This does not reflect who does what amount of work throughout the entire season, but works best for our team. Make sure to understand a team's situation before you make assumptions about them.

Another platitude: a mentor should be a coworker, not a help desk.