2009 Control System Possibility?

[seanwitte]

Originally Posted by erikstotle

I whole-heartedly agree. Engineering is not about throwing together blocks of high-level code that "magically" works.

Actually, writing software for a living is primarily about doing just that. It's too expensive and time consuming to write everything from scratch. But this is FIRST, not real life. You're still at a point where you need to learn how all of this stuff works at the most basic level. I think the rules about code re-use need to be revised to allow teams to build up a body of knowledge and expertise over time. Your first year may be ugly, but each year after that should be better.

Going along with that, what about teams that choose not to invest resources to build up their programming expertise? A team without mechanical prowess can turn to AndyMark, but there is no source other that Kevin Watson for programming help. There are scattered whitepapers and forum posts, but no real tested and reusable code. A library of solid source code would be beneficial to everyone.