Finding problems too late

[pfreivald]

The Friday before ship we were literally flipping our robot over on its side -- letting it fall as hard as it would -- and then using the righter to right itself, checking to make sure everything still worked, fixing the things that didn't, and then doing it again.

And again.

And again.

That's when we discovered that if our robot tips over fast enough, she automatically rights herself after bouncing the lifter off the floor... Which was really cool. We called it a feature!

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On a side note, there has been an inside joke on our team that should, IMO, be spread across the FIRST community. The idea is as follows:

In all robot code -- not just ours, but all robots from the coolest of automobile assemblers to the humblest of photocopiers -- there is a subroutine that we call 'Secret Subroutine C'. You cannot delete it, and you cannot in any way remove it, even by reformatting everything and starting over. The best you can hope to do is minimize (not prevent) the chances of it executing, and minimize the damage caused when it executes. It reads only one line, and roughly translated from machine code into English, it reads:

"Run amok and destroy your masters."