easyC vs Hardcoding

[BradAMiller]

This is an interesting discussion.

I believe that easyC (or WPILib if you want to hand-write the C code) raises the level of what teams can accomplish. What it does is provides device drivers, interrupt handlers, and timer support for the sensors used on the robot. The idea is that teams can now concentrate on the "robot problem" not the "how to make a PIC chip work problem".

The counter-argument is like writing a windows program and saying that if you don't actually write the disk driver you are not learning how to read files. Nobody writes disk drivers except the operating system developers - and that's a good thing! You can focus on the data in the files - not how to make disk heads move to the right spot on the right platter at the right time. Not that that knowledge isn't interesting or useful - but most people just don't need it.

By using easyC or WPIlib you are focusing on different problems, for example motor control, navigation, precise robot control, and interpretation of sensor data. And more important, the global problem you are trying to solve with your robot. These skills are transferable to any platform that you might use in the future.

Writing low level code has some general applicability, but most of those skills are specific to the PIC chip, and even more specifically to the IFI implementation of this platform.

So I'd encourage teams to spend their precious 6 weeks and two days focusing on the high level problems that FIRST gives us and use this opportunity to raise the bar on the complexity of your designs. Make your robots as creative as possible and do cool autonomous and computer assisted tele-operation functions that you might not have been able to do before.

Just my opinion.