why blame the programmers??

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ChrisH

I find this very hard to believe. Flawless code would violate the First Law of Programing. There must be a flaw, you just haven't found it yet

Yep. I thought I had a good program for doing something (not involving a robot).

Then I went to test it, and it wouldn't load a file in correctly. Fixed that.

Then it's not catching some things it should. Fixed that.

Now it's really going haywire, but I know where the problem is. I *only* have to rewrite a couple of functions or so...

[ideasrule]

This year, the only time something went wrong in teleop that WAS a programming issue, programmers didn't get blamed! During the Rochester regional the drivers were experiencing massive lag with the robot, but blamed the FMS and never told the programmers about it. At the end of the day, I finally overheard them talking about the lag and fixed the problem within several minutes.

Moral of the story: better communication!

[Foster]

Great,what did you do to fix the lag? We had a lag problem at FLR and ended up pulling the vision code.

[Tom Ore]

It looks to me that we should address the very notion of "blame." This is a team sport and the team sinks or swims together. When there is an issue the team needs to find the best way to handle it. It can put incredible stress on one or two people if the rest of the team starts to lean on them for a solution. Instead, be supportive of the group (mechanical, electrical, softwre...) trying to solve the issue.

After the season is over, there is plenty of time for a "lessons learned' meeting to talk about what when right and what went wrong. This will help next season go more smoothly.

[ideasrule]

Originally Posted by Foster

Great,what did you do to fix the lag? We had a lag problem at FLR and ended up pulling the vision code.

That lag problem was because the code was, contrary to my expectations, saving files to the cRIO. The cRIO filled up and the robot became extremely laggy.

Another lag problem we had at the Waterloo regionals was because we used a pool noddle to fix the camera in place, and the pool noddle was pushing against the camera's reset button.

[billbo911]

Three thoughts:

1) Without good mechanics, programming doesn't mean squat.

2) Without decent programming, even incredible mechanics means nothing.

3) Why fix blame? Find the problem and work together on a solution!

[NorviewsVeteran]

Originally Posted by billbo911

3) Why fix blame? Find the problem and work together on a solution!

We would, but the programmers have to fix the code first.