What New FIRST Programmers should be taught

[Billfred]

What should they be taught? How to turn a wrench!

You may think I'm being flip about this, but I'm not. With the 2815/1398 collaboration this year, we had two drive bases floating around. 2815's was assembled first, so it went off with the programmers so they could get to work. While they were heavy in programming knowledge, they proved less skilled at handling the little quibbles of any new FRC drivetrain. (Compounding this problem was the fact that their work space was on the second floor of another building about a quarter-mile walk away from the machine shop...but that's life.) It reached the point that I spent several build sessions camped out in the room troubleshooting minor wiring and mechanical bugs just to keep them working while our kids were busy working on the kicker and the (ultimately-abandoned) hanger.

If you've got trained programmers, spend some of that time savings on making sure they can make minor repairs to the robot--troubleshooting the control system, fixing a bad crimp, adjusting a chain run, That Pesky Thing Your Robots Always Do--and you will reap the benefits in less down-time for the programmers and fewer drug-away-for-two-minutes moments (or, if you're like us up there, 20 minutes) for your full-fledged hardware guys.