disaster in israel regional

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by lior_regev

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Now, I'm gonna surprise you and say that ALOT of the problems were becuase of the teams. Most of the teams in israel simply don't know how to program their robot correctly. And the proof of that is the fact that our robot worked perfectly. we a comm problem only once. PLUS when i looked at teams codes it was all rubbish, all messed up and not orginized correctly.
People were opening up comms with motors, sensors, cameras, and everything else, without closing them or using the WORST RefNums ever, thus calling the wrong RefNum in Teleop or Autonomous. I think that for next year we should, first of all, give some seminars about programming becuase the level of programmimng in Israel is the worst that you could ever have.
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Lior, #2630, Thunderbolts

I cannot disagree more. There is NOTHING a team should be able to do with code on its robot that should bring down the entire field.

If FIRST has not protected itself from this then they have failed.

Having competed in Baltimore last weekend and being an essentially rookie team with very limited programming skill on the team, I can say that the system this year is a big step back in terms of increased complexity and reduced reliability.

Having a Windows XP PC for display is okay, useful, etc. However, imho, building a real time control system with 6 to 10 Windows XP PCs in the loop without a professional grade, real time software overlord on each is like playing Russian Roulette -- someone is eventually going to get a bullet the brain.

Looks like the Israeli Regional took one for the team last weekend.

Many regrets.

Joe J.