Team Structure and Build Schedule

[Monochron]

I'll offer the general comment that you should allocate more time for most things that you have on there. For instance you only 1 week of actual robot programming. Often programming projects work by programming small chunks at a time, testing them, and them moving on. Other times people try to write a bunch of code up front and then do a bunch of testing afterword (not what I recommend). But either way there will be a ton of code writing all throughout the process. Considering that you are teaching students week 1, I might allocate 3 or 4 weeks to programming on the actual robot.

[MamaSpoldi]

Originally Posted by Thayer McCollum

I'm not going to lie. These first two weeks of programming scare me. I read the other posts and I can understand that you don't have much preseason time, but it seems like you're moving from a different language to C++ this year (since you have to install it). But even if you aren't switching to C++ it seems like you are intending to train your programmers in the first two weeks of the season which seems like a bad idea to me. I don't know all the circumstances of your team but it seems like it could be very easy for your programming to go very wrong.

Originally Posted by Monochron

I'll offer the general comment that you should allocate more time for most things that you have on there. For instance you only 1 week of actual robot programming. Often programming projects work by programming small chunks at a time, testing them, and them moving on. Other times people try to write a bunch of code up front and then do a bunch of testing afterword (not what I recommend). But either way there will be a ton of code writing all throughout the process. Considering that you are teaching students week 1, I might allocate 3 or 4 weeks to programming on the actual robot.

I most definitely agree with both of these comments. Although you will definitely have to do some installation and updating of your programming tools after kickoff and that should be completed in week 1, the C++ training and learning to code really needs to be done off-season. It is unrealistic to think that you can learn to code and write all the code needed for your robot in the 6-week build season. This is especially true when you have inexperienced programmers. They will need time to test their code and figure out what the problems are... and then fix them. Writing our robot code is a process that we engage in for the entire build season... although we sometimes have to scrap code that has been written (but probably not tested) due to changes in the robot as it is being designed and built we consider that just an opportunity to get more experience. Testing is critical and then using the pieces already created to form the autonomous mode(s) will provide a lot more reliability and maintainability of your software. Good luck!