Programmers: I Have A Challenge For You

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

Not to burst any one's bubble but there appears to be a severe lack of understanding of how large of an undertaking autonomous programming really is. There are many programmers in this thread, some of whom have already said they are new to programming who think this is feasible. I urge you all to re think this and to take this in small steps, automate a task in Tele-op, i.e. automatic aiming.

I think that it is important to improve the level of software development that we see in FIRST. However the posts in this thread show a severe lack of appreciation for the difficulty of developing true autonomous robots. I urge anyone considering this to talk to some of the more experienced software and control mentors on your teams and on Chief Delphi about the feasibility of this. If you still think it is practical or possible then rather than wasting a build season trying this, why not exhibition matches at one of the fall off season competitions, and any one who is interested could write autonomous code and test the feasibility of this type of competition in that environment.


-James

Yes I am aware of the difficulty of the problem at hand, but I have always learned that with good preparation, anything is possible. Before I even write a single line of code, I would have to do a lot of studying and pseudo coding. Like I said in previous posts, if all goes wrong, the driver can just press a switch to go into real teleop. thats just one if statement. Yea I always take programming in small steps, get the smaller things working then work up