should there be a award for programming skill?

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Programming is a means, not an end. I believe official program awards should be given to recognize accomplishments rather than "skill".

How to judge programming skill is a difficult issue in any case. It's both easier and more appropriate to judge programming results.

Design is also a means, not an end ... but: General Motors Industrial Design Award

Fabrication is also a means, not an end ... but: Motorola Quality Award

I believe that the OP is correct that there should be an award for programming and it should include things like clean, understandable code with comments, error trapping and standardized variable naming. It should show creative usage of the languages available and accomplish the tasks at hand without superflous (is that a word?) code.

However, I believe that the code should not be the 'code that the robot shopped with' but instead should be pulled from the RC prior to a (random) match on the Friday of an event. This would show working code in it's normal state as it is used on the robot (not some cleaned up version that we have no idea of functionality).

Just my $.02