Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Soukup
So we can expect this season's FTC competitions to be smooth and relatively free of delays?
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That is certainly the goal. Part of this is purely technical; addressing connectivity issues and making the system more robust (an example of this is improved LabVIEW templates that remove all of the Bluetooth lag). Part of this is ease of use. Hopefully these two things (among others) will make competitions move more smoothly. The one thing we cannot account for is user error. Because all computer based systems are inherently complicated it is not a trivial task to train the volunteers who run competitions and matches. This being said our volunteers are not the problem (I <3 FIRST volunteers and staff), but rather the solution will be the developers ability to make the system simple, elegant, and most importantly: well documented.
On a note of documentation I am going to stress (again) how essential it is to read the FTC Getting Started Manual. We have made a considerable investment in documentation this year (Help files and the Getting Started Manual). While the Getting Started Manual is mostly geared towards LabVIEW development it contains a lot of good information that any team can put to use.
Both might accomplish the same "function" or "results" (perhaps a lift of some kind), but there are clear differences in simplicity, in cost, in maintainability, extensibility, and several other "ilities" -- which are a staple of engineering evaluation criteria. - msd [more] 
24-09-2009, 09:41
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