Programming and Electronics — Getting Started

[Sidney San Martín]

This is my first year on my team as a non-freshman, so I want to fully learn and become self sufficient in programming and electronics. I've been reading the docs, but have had trouble finding basic but necessary information. For example, we were testing the cam and had to hook up the RC. I had no idea which breaker to use for it, and only found out when another team member told me.
Some devices have manuals up, but they usually aren't… enough. The smart power distro panel is supposed to hook into the program port and be able to influence the program, but what commands do I use for that? The cam comes with plenty of documentation, but after I've calibrated it, how do I tell the robot to "drive to green, stop x feet away, pick up tetra, find yellow, stop x feet away, drop tetra on goal."?? To make matters worse, the c programming that everything is teaching about seems to be obsolete… in some way. There is this new scripting system they've introduced, but, again, I can't find anything about it!

How did you, the team programming and electronics experts, get to where you are? Where do I turn to become a FIRST robotmaster? Thanks in advance.

Note: I'm going to log off for the night, so I'll only see your responses tomorrow afternoon.