What do your programmer's do (besides the robot)

[jtrv]

Things we've started introducing lately:
(We had 4 programmers, 1 was in his first year of FRC but had a lot of experience in other programming areas, and 1 programming mentor who is a student from a local college)

-Look for ways to improve code layout / design / structure from year to year. Look at great things and awful things in each year's code and how things have progressed. Ways to improve and increase clarity is very important in a team as large as yours.
-The newest programmer overhauled the website and re-designed it from scratch (I believe he used some basic UI frameworks, but regardless, still a big project).
-Wiring (electrical & pneumatic)
-Helping with scouting. We haven't made our own electronic scouting program, and I'm not sure if we will in the near future. What I did do was create a program that simulated day 2 qualifications based on day 1 performances and day 2 schedules. Since our scouting team meets after day 1 and also right before alliance selection, having a good idea of what standings might look like on the day 1 meeting is a good idea. It obviously isn't perfect, but it gives insight on which teams could be in the top 8.
-Lots of work on control system development.
-We also procrastinate a lot.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by jtrv

Things we've started introducing lately:
.. procrastinate a lot.

You might want to put off procrastination until next year.

[DonRotolo]

What do our programmers* do?
Bother the cat, mostly.


*No apostrophe, it is not possessive.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

What do our programmers* do?
Bother the cat, mostly.


*No apostrophe, it is not possessive.

Or perhaps it's the last word that's misspelled.

Our programmer's Dew keeps him (or her) awake to do more programming.

[Ichlieberoboter]

I was the head programmer on my team and also a chairmans presenter and I did some electrical. This isn't the best example cause we had a really small team but chairmans can always use help from my experience.

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

we did the robot reveal video, and I also did electronics.

[hardcopi]

Ours come up with more and more disturbing plans to take over the world. We try to keep them busy.

Another good thing is documentation. We lost most of our programmers this year, but thanks to documentation (and the fact that they are teaching weekly classes to newbies until they leave for College) we are going to be ok.

FInd some reusable bits of code for them to improve upon. A favorite of our team is the joystick conditioning code.

[FlamingSpork]

Originally Posted by hardcopi

Ours come up with more and more disturbing plans to take over the world.

Always fun to plot, but when you actually try, you get a segmentation fault.

I'm working on coding a field management system for Maize Craze, and I so far have learned that any line of code can cause a segfault.

My team has also been working on learning how to make our code a tangled mess based on this: https://www.thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html

[GeeTwo]

This year we're requiring all of our programmers (and all of our controls people, and all of our mechanical people) to take a job on the business side of the house as well. "Business" includes just about everything that doesn't relate to the robot build, including Chairman's submission, outreach, web/social media, fund raising, scouting/match strategy (though not build strategy), spirit, safety, and probably a few more things I can't think of right now. The concept is to have separate meetings for "business" vs "technical". During the "off season", there should be a business vs technical breakdown approaching 1:1. During build season, this will probably be more like 5:1, or perhaps even worse.