What do you think about how easy theyre making programming?

[Roland]

Those jerks, trying to help rookies write autonomous code!

Edit: I'm feeling really, really depressed at the number of people taking this seriously.

[colt527]

I personally disagree with the decision to hand people the complex code in easy to use pieces. This might be because I am a little biased because I spent countless hours working on my own PID drive systems, and now it all seems useless. But, as for people saying that it mirrors real life in the fact that you are never going to make something from scratch, then you are right. But the fact is if you tried to mirror real life in every aspect, IMO, you would be drowning out one of the key factors that makes FIRST fun. In real life, they already have designs for articulation arms, or drive trains, but does FIRST give u them. No. So you can not apply the argument of saying it mirrors real life because you would run in to that problem.

I also think the argument that this mirrors real life can be discredited in another way also. Programming is a large part of engineering, if it was not they would not do it in FIRST. The idea is that you take some things that are already made and you build on it to complete the task. The code it takes to accompish the task does not just magically fall out of the sky, someone had to write it. I think a better approach would be to maybe have some very basic code to start rookie teams off and some really hard code that would be impossible for the average High School kid to figure out. This still allows room for complex problem solving that the programmers have to deal with. You want to be pushing the limits of technology by figuring out these problems.

There are more reasons I think this code library was not the best idea. Lets say last year a freshman joined the robotics team and fell in love with the programming aspect. Using C, a language used in real life all of the time will give the kid a better understanding of what the career of being a computer scientist would be life. He gets to walk in the realm of real life programming scenarios. Now with this new competition, a freshman can come into the team, and they may get a false sense of what programming really is. They may get an overly simplified look of what really is programming. All they see is the beginning instructions (Go forward, go backward, turn pi radians) and the end result. They have no idea what goes on in between.

I guess my feels can all be summed up in the fact that I think that though you are helping out rookie teams and leveling the playing field and that is great, but isn't this putting more focus on the competition itself and not what you learn on the way. This gives rookies a chance to compete against veterans, but will they ever really learn the insides of a PID loop or what interrupts are. If it was not for having to figure all of the code out for myself, I know I wouldn't have a clue either.

These are just my opinions, I don't know the outcome, or how this will work out, and I don't claim to.

[Chris Bright]

I Love the new stuff they gave us. I'm pretty decent at programming but there are things that still allude me. I plan on reviewing the pid code to see exactly how it works. Now i will be able to get a handle on the concept. I will be looking at code that already works and not trying blindly to make code from scratch. If you know how it works why do you need to type the keys yourself?

[scitobor 617]

Originally Posted by colt527

I guess my feels can all be summed up in the fact that I think that though you are helping out rookie teams and leveling the playing field and that is great, but isn't this putting more focus on the competition itself and not what you learn on the way. This gives rookies a chance to compete against veterans, but will they ever really learn the insides of a PID loop or what interrupts are. If it was not for having to figure all of the code out for myself, I know I wouldn't have a clue either.

These are just my opinions, I don't know the outcome, or how this will work out, and I don't claim to.

I completely agree that the FIRST handing us all the code is a bad idea. It truely does take the focus off of learning a skill like programming. If I were a rookie trying to learn programming I would not learn much if I new all I had to do was use a supplied scripting language to tell the robot to travel 30mm and turn 4pi radians. I am also upset because I have been working on writting a scripting language and gui-frontend for non-programmers on my team to edit and write code for auotonomuos mode.

[TimeOut]

From what I understand you can still write the code the way you have in the past. For instance, if your PID loop works better than theirs, then use yours instead! The graphical interface may be able to take advantage of the scripting languange and become even more robust.

There are two parts to this discussion. First, those who love to code for the sake of coding (yes, it's fun, challenging, frustrating and rewarding) and those who code for the sake of accomplishing a task! Different goals and both can now be accomplished.

Those who have implemented a cool feature in the past that may fit into a scripting language by all means write the new command so others can implement it their code; as a scripting element. This is just plain good software engineering; software re-use and abstraction are the two main principals that come to mind.

Now is the time for the hot-shot coders to step up and really show off their stuff and the wet behind the ears coders to pay close attention to whats going on!

Cheers,
Sean

[dababyjebus]

I dont really think that them giving us a scripting engine for the robot is a bad thing. It helps with some of the most rudamentary tasks, but from what i have seen they are not giving you anything that will help you score any points in autonomous mode. They are leaving all the more advanced stuff for us to do, while giving us a few easy commands like "move" and "wait" so that we dont have to reinvent the wheel. It also gives newbs an example of what they can do.

[kevin.fort]

Originally Posted by Leav

arn't they making it too easy?

theyre practicly handing us the code.

oh wait... they are handing us the code!

i dont like this, but i might not see the whole picture yet...

-Leav

yea it seems too easy but maybe with this much of the code written for us we will be able to do more extensive more complicated programs becaus ewe dont have to worry about the more simple stuff
We will see

[Nixterrimus]

I think that FIRST is doing new teams a huge favor. I can see the arguement that it's too easy but I think that this is an unfair statement made by elder teams. It's the sort of idea that if I had to be beaten up to learn something then everyone else should too. But I see this as giving new teams an oppurtunity to actually build a decent robot. Will it teach them? Yes I think so and then next year they'll come back and they'll say, we can do it in this scripted language, now let's try and do it in C, let's see what happens. The way I see it First isn't ditching C, they're just giving an alternate for people that can't do it, YET.

[galewind]

Originally Posted by seanwitte

This is real life. Nobody is going to pay you to write something thats already been done a hundred times. The challenge is to take all of this pre-existing code and do something useful with it. Believe me, I understand what you're saying. Do you honestly think that NASA could have put those rovers on Mars if they wrote everything from scratch? Take what they give you, study it, and extend it. Its great to want to do it yourself, but while you're coding and testing your math library in week three you could be refining some mind blowing autonomous code.

I agree 100%. Just because they give us some better scripts doesn't mean that they're handing us the code. Instead of giving us some wood and nails and saying "build us a box", they're handing us power tools and saying "now make us something cool"

I, for one, am very excited about the idea. I just need time to look things over and play with it a bit.

[bigqueue]

Originally Posted by Leav

arn't they making it too easy?

theyre practicly handing us the code.

oh wait... they are handing us the code!

i dont like this, but i might not see the whole picture yet...

-Leav

Don;'t think of it as them giving you all the code....think of it as then giving you a more advanced tool-set to work with. Let's face it, the code is probably only a set of library like calls to handle low-level hardware I/O.

You still have to create the higher level structure and intellegence to make it do something....besides, just think of the stuff you can do with your own sensors and motors on the arms or whatever ....they have only given stuff for the drive.

Better tools.....that's all. (we have graduated to the 21st century....no more bare skins and knives)

-Quentin

[CmptrGk]

well when lavery, i think,was explaing the autonomus for this year he said that it was programmed with a simple text file, so there must be some sort of way to translate between the text file and the code for the real game. it may have yet to be released.

[stephenthe1]

yeah, it's frustrating to me as well. considering all the hours I put into understanding c, and then they give us this. plus it'll make people who don't know anything feel super smart, and make me seem no better then them. that's aggravating. but I wouldn't mind seeing the code the scripting language produces to understand things better. where is the thing for writing these scripts at?

[bigqueue]

Originally Posted by seanwitte

This is real life. Nobody is going to pay you to write something thats already been done a hundred times. The challenge is to take all of this pre-existing code and do something useful with it. Believe me, I understand what you're saying. Do you honestly think that NASA could have put those rovers on Mars if they wrote everything from scratch? Take what they give you, study it, and extend it. Its great to want to do it yourself, but while you're coding and testing your math library in week three you could be refining some mind blowing autonomous code.

This is exactly the right way to look at it...and accurate too.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by seanwitte

This is real life. Nobody is going to pay you to write something thats already been done a hundred times. The challenge is to take all of this pre-existing code and do something useful with it. Believe me, I understand what you're saying. Do you honestly think that NASA could have put those rovers on Mars if they wrote everything from scratch? Take what they give you, study it, and extend it. Its great to want to do it yourself, but while you're coding and testing your math library in week three you could be refining some mind blowing autonomous code.

I for one totally agree with the above statments.

In the REAL WORLD, I program servos and industrial robots everyday. Every vendor now a days is coming out with their own scripting or I call it "Mnemonics". It totally follows the path of what the industrial automation theme is leaning toward. Because of my job, time is critical to complete a task within a required time. Design time is critical to make a profit on a job. The easier it is to program the servo or industrial robot, the more money I make for the company I work for and the less stress on me. There is nothing wrong with a "CAN" package software in my opinion. It what you do with it.

[colt527]

Originally Posted by chakorules

I for one totally agree with the above statments.

In the REAL WORLD, I program servos and industrial robots everyday. Every vendor now a days is coming out with their own scripting or I call it "Mnemonics". It totally follows the path of what the industrial automation theme is leaning toward. Because of my job, time is critical to complete a task within a required time. Design time is critical to make a profit on a job. The easier it is to program the servo or industrial robot, the more money I make for the company I work for and the less stress on me. There is nothing wrong with a "CAN" package software in my opinion. It what you do with it.

Yes, this is more like real life, BUT WHAT ARE YOU LEARNING. I'm basically going to rephrase my paragraphs above here. OK, is the FRC challenge completely based on real life problems that have not been done before? Are there robots already out there that can pick up tetrahedral shape objects. I'm sure there is, but does FIRST give you them and then tell you to just control it better then everyone else? FIRST is not entirely about real life, IMO, its about the experience along the way. I may sound like I'm raining on everyones parade by maybe limiting what "cool" things the robots can do, but I don't think this is about making it do "cool" and impressive things, it's about challenging yourself to make the robot work to the best that you possibly can and being proud about the fact that you did it on your own. Let's say you are a rookie team and you get dead reckoning to work and you know that you put all of your problem solving efforts into making it work, I believe it is just as gratifying as a veteran team putting all of their efforts into making an automatically shifting transmission that maximizes the torque and uses PID control. The rookie team may not win the regional, but is that what FIRST is really about?

I think that this is taking away from the learning and putting more of a focus on real life things. Sure you can still learn C, just because you don't need it doesn't stop someone from going out and learning about it, but people seem to learn what they need to learn. Maybe this is my Social Studies teachers fault. We have to read 8-15 pages a night and the next day we get a quiz on it that makes up for your grade. I read because I know I will be tested on it the next day. Last year I could get away with not reading because I would just cram the day before the test and do fine, but I really didn't learn (enough with the wild tangents). The point is (and I can't speak for everyone) is that some people learn what they need to. If you don't NEED to learn C, then you might not bother learning it, and you might not discover that programming may be your true passion.

Also, I sort of briefly mentioned this in my last post. Where does the code that they give you come from. SOMEONE HAD TO WRITE IT. Lets go on another tangent adventure. Say you work for a computer game company, and you are creating a game, you will usually use a game engine already written and this is fine. But what if you work for the company that writes that engine from scratch?

I don't really know why I feel this way, but I've been like this all my life. I NEED to re-invent something, I want to learn the true inner workings of things and I just believe this is taking the chance away from people in order to do that. Maybe it comes down to the fact that I believe that FIRST should not just be an opportunity for engineers to find their true passion, but computer scientists and PR people and everyone involved as well.