Championship Results

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Mike Soukup

But this is week 8. We kind of assumed they would have things working by now, especially since weeks 2-7 were solid and there was no indication of problems heading into this weekend. We're frustrated because we, the 3rd party providers who rely on a working FRC data feed, get slammed with emails & complaints asking why our product is broken, when in fact it's doing a wonderful job of serving up stale data.

I think this is the most frustrating part. The FRC community is full of very passionate people who are heavily involved. There are people who have mentored FRC teams longer than I've been alive - think about that. Look at Mike, he's been around since 1996 and he's still involved making an awesome app over 10,000 people have downloaded (not even including iOS, stats aren't listed). That's a kind of sustained devotion other communities would kill to have.

FIRST keeps telling us to "make it loud" and there are many third party solutions out there that take this to heart. But it gets really hard, and really frustrating to do that when the platform we build on top of is unreliable, especially at the premier event of the season. The current situation is definitely better than it was in past years, but it's definitely not up to the level it needs to be in order to make the kind of impact FIRST wants (and deserves).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the thing I want to see most in a couple weeks is an in-depth, technical blog post about the issues they've had this season and how they're planning on mitigating them for next season. There is a lot of experience in the community, and there are plenty of people willing to help out, all they have to do is ask. It would appear that all these issues were avoidable.

So yeah, frustrating.