The increasing amount of pre-canned code

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by efoote868

They might get in over their head, but that's part of the learning experience.
If something does break down, if they do fail, they will learn.
That's the point of FIRST.

You know why veteran programmers are so good at debugging code? Its because they've made a hundred times as many mistakes as the rookies. We should give the rookies every opportunity to learn, even if it means putting them at risk of "failure".

Ok, but what gives them more learning when "failing". Failing because you don't even a little bit understand what the black box is doing, or failing because you understood the concept, tried to build it, and failed?

I'm not sure which side of this fence I really sit on. On one hand, I think WPILib is spoon-feeding a lot of the more advanced stuff that is advanced in mechanical, programming, and just general understanding of how it works, and this is both frustrating to rookie teams that don't understand it, and makes the teams who spent years perfecting a system of their own to do the same thing lose whatever advantage they'd gained through those years of perfection into the system (swerve drives come to mind here). On the other hand, I see it getting alot of teams who don't have the time, money, mentors, and other resources to develop these advanced systems up to speed.

I'm not sure if it helps or hurts, and I'm not sure if the competition is better or worse for it. It makes things different than they would be without it. I think its probably a net positive force, by encouraging teams to try an advanced drivetrain, and forcing them to learn how it works along the way, however, I can see downsides to it too.

I think there comes a line where its starting to make things too easy. I'm just not sure where that line is.