Seeking advice for rookie programming

[GreyingJay]

Once you've installed wpilib, there are some great little example programs you can access by creating a new project and selecting a new wpilib robot project. (I don't have it in front of me but you should find it easily).

If you needed to quickly whip up some code to test a drivetrain, for example, you could fire up Eclipse and have a basic IterativeRobot with a 2-joystick tank drive, ready to deploy, in a matter of about 30 seconds. Which has come in handy a few times when doing diagnostics in a hurry, such as in a pit.

But more practically, you can find examples of just about anything you need to do, either by browsing the wpilib website or creating a sample project to play with. "How do I use pneumatics?" Boom, here's a working example.