New Leader Need Help, Please?

[Alexa Stott]

Well, if they see things as being a chore, then maybe they're not really doing what they want to do. Are people choosing to be programmers, or are you just teaching pretty much everyone programming? On our team, if you want to be on programming, you sign up at the beginning of the year and you are taught programming by our head programmer(s).

Also, on the subject of teaching C Programming, I would just first ask if anyone has any experience in programming. If that is the case, then try to teach those people things specifically about robots (analog vs. digital inputs, programming autonomous, etc.). However, if the people have little or no programming experience, start out with simple things, such as what integers are and such. A very important part of programming is knowing how the robot actually works. Show them the bot and points some important stuff out to them, like the RC with the PWMs, the motors, encoders if you have them, etc., and explain the functions of each.

Then, explain the if else statements and such. Show them the code and say what it literally means.

Example:
if (t<30)
{
pwm01 = 127;
}

Literally say to them, "This code segment means that if the variable 't' is less than 30, pwm will be set to 127." It helps a lot to say things out like that when first learning programming, because it helps them to learn the logic about it.

After you've done that, have them maybe do you some simple things like program the joysticks and all the buttons on them, if used. Don't do it for them, but give them hints like "So if this button is pushed, we want the shooter wheel to turn on." or something, and have them figure out how to write the code seg for that. You have to make them think for themselves so that when you're gone, they know what to do.

Once you've gone through some simple things like that, it might be a good idea to get out one of the old robots (maybe something with an arm, or such) and have them program the joystics again for that specific robot, and do a basic autonomous program.

When I learned how to do autonomous, our first program simply made the arm of the 2005 robot go up for a little bit, and at a certain point, go down again.

You have to let them make some errors in their programs so they will learn from them and be able to think for themselves what they need to do and debug the code.

I just learned programming about a year ago from our head programmer, and he did many things like this that made it very easy to understand and another student and I picked it up fairly well.

Best of luck!