What do you think about how easy theyre making programming?

[pickle]

I also have kind of mixed feelings on this. I do feel it takes some of the challenge out, what fun is it if you haven't ripped out all your hair and beaten your now bald head against the wall for extended periods of time.... But it makes sense. If you want to be technical, FIRST gave us alot of code last year, we didn't have to make the processors interface or anything, they gave us default code, and they let us use C, which is a higher level language than ASM. We could have to code it all from scratch using purely ASM.... All that they've done, is given us a higher level interface to a lower level system, which is all a programming language or scripting language is.

For the argument that it may make people "not realize their passion", I would argue the opposite. Learning C is a daunting task, its huge, and there are tons of quirks and tricks to it. It might actually scare newer programmers away. I discovered my love for programming when my cousin's girlfriend taught me some HTML 6 years ago, and I've been hooked on all kinds of programming ever since. I found it through something simple, and moved up to more complicated stuff, once you catch the bug, you want to be able to do more and more and more. Its probable that the more experience programmers will feel limited by the tools given, and will work to expand them, whereas the newer programmers will be satisfied with what is given to them, and won't worry about it. You can't give a first grader a calculus book and expect them to learn, or like math, you have to start them off simple. For many people, its fine to work with the tools given and not worry about the underlying workings. I bet many of you code in C, or Java, or something like that, and don't think about the assembly version of what you're writing.

Most of the time in the real world, you'll be given something to work with. You have argued "What if you're the person making that tool?" Well, then you must be very very very good at what you do. Why did you write your own scripting stuff in years past? JUst for your health? It was to provide an easier interface to something much more complex. And what do you do by sharing that code? You have given less experience people a way to easily write complex code. It doesn't hurt to know whats going on behind the scenes, as a matter of fact, its a great thing to know, but its not something thats required. Look at people who use HTML, they aren't writing every paint command for the browser window, somebody else did that for you, and you use their frontend.

But I see the other side, I have a tendancy to like reinventing the wheel, I don't like to use other people's code, I like to do it myself, and thats all fine and dandy if you're not working against a deadline, but if I'm pressed for time on a project, then I will certainly use somebody else's code if I can.Theres doing for the sake of accomplishing something, and then for personal enrichment. Usually for personal enrichment you aren't fighting a deadline, and if you want to spend months researching the inner workings of something, you by all means can, but FIRST doesn't give that luxury. If you worked for a game making firm, and you were supposed to have a game released in 6 months, lets say you spend 4 researching how the graphics hardware works, and 1.5 months writing a library to interface with it. Thats great, but now you have half a month to make a game, when you could have used something that was already out there and had 6 months to focus on the game. Using tools doesn't make you any less of a programmer, it makes you a more efficent worker. My English teacher in 9th grade drilled this into our heads, "Work smarter, not harder." Thats a real life lesson for ya.

[n0cturnalxb]

Honestly .. I like it. Some people might not be able to get much out of it, but I know I will. I taught myself HTML through comparing the code to the results .. this gives me a chance to teach myself some basic C programming by comparing the code to the English version of it all.

-shrugs-

Then again, not everyone thinks like me, so.. I don't know. Personally, though, I'm sort of glad that they did what they did. Advanced programmers/teams aren't restricted to the "simple" coding, either.. so you can do whatever you want.

[Caleb Fulton]

You can still read through their code and gain from it, especially the well-designed state machines and conventions used for the RS-232 driver they wrote and how they interface the driver with the camera. They did an amazing job of separating concerns -- keeping the implementation of the autonomous functions completely separate from the functions themselves, such that only VERY little knowledge of the inner-workings of the functions is needed in order to use them. We spent A LOT of time last semester in advanced C learning methods for doing this, and I suspect that it is a valued attribute of any large software programming environment in the "real world."

I agree somewhat with you all, though, that something as simple as an angular/displacement PID system should have been left to the teams. These are fundamental control topics from which many team members have learned a lot in the past, including myself.

[Chris_Elston]

I've been all about sharing everything I learn. I even post my source code that I write for industrial automation. If you care to look:

http://forum.mrplc.com/index.php?act...hor=chakorules

I even shared my electrical symbols addon for AutoCad for the whole world to download:
http://forum.mrplc.com/index.php?act...CODE=02&id=146

I encourge this because my purpose is to help people learn quicker and get the job done faster. I think you can still learn alot by seeing what others have done. That's how open source software got started. Everyone looks at what someone else has done, and makes it better. It's like stacking your man hours ontop of each other. You keep adding to the time that has already been spent to perfect the product. In this case, your robot automous mode.

But the points in here are vaild, it depends on what kind of a person you are.
Your either a Linus Torvalds or a Bill Gates... LOL ;-) no pun intended..

On a side note...I've been looking at this new software and I still haven't found this "scripting" yet anyway....bah....I am going to bed...

I've been able to complie and debug the new 2005 code and the 2005 Camera code, but no scripting for the kiddies in there yet...

[Alex Pelan]

I think this is great. As time goes on, and as we FIRST students become FIRST mentors, higher and higher level programming languages (ones that are closer and closer to being exactly like language) are going to become a lot more common. FIRST is giving us one of these, except it only has two built in functions. It's an entirely different experience, and if you don't want to use it, you don't have to. Would you rather write code in binary than assembly? Rather write in assembly than C? The same principle applies here. I think this is great for the rookie teams because, as anyone who attended competitions last year, not many teams were able to have a functioning autonomous. THis is making it so that everyone has at least something for their autonomous mode.

[Greg Marra]

Trust me, if all the scripting can do out of the box is drive, turn, and wait, it's not going to be effective.

You still need to figure out how to get your camera to home in on the vision tetra, track where you are in relation to the goal you're capping, and then raise up the tetra to cap it.

Of course, when you're done you'll be able to write a script command called "cap vision tetra center" and then have 1 line of code for all of autonomous

[Enterprize]

I think its great that they're doing this. It gives rookie teams a much smaller (and less hectic) workload programming-wise and for veterans, well, like people have mentioned before, its not necessary to use the code. Even if your team does decide to use the code, its not like you wont have anything to do. You'll still need to program autonomous mode and any appendages/sensors your robot needs.

[LBK Rules]

I personaly like it.

We had so much trouble trying to write up line-sensor code.

Thank you FIRST!

(And nice avatar, Enterprise.)

EDIT

You know what, I really hope FIRST will tell us where to get these tools.

[TheOtherTaylor]

With the easy code everyone can think more about game strategy. This thing's like a massive moving tic-tac-toe. It's going to get pretty crazy with six teams out there trying to strategize on the fly.

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by Alex Pelan

THis is making it so that everyone has at least something for their autonomous mode.

I think you're right. At first, I felt a little selfish about it, because I didn't like the feeling that suddenly everyone was at the same level, even though I have more programming skill/experience than others, because that's how I spend my time. However, I'm now seeing how this is all part of the field-leveling plan of FIRST, to make things accessible to new, underfunded, or undermentored teams, but still allowing those who can go above and beyond to do so. With this scripting, virtually every team should be able to at least knock off the hanging tetra, but not manipulate the vision tetra without a lot of additional effort. Those who have done this before will still be able to do fantastic things in autonomous, but at least all of the teams will be able to do something.

[mikew]

I was worried about this for all of 3 seconds. However, autonomous is just a little part of the game that rookies can get into now. 15 seconds, big deal. I think it's good to have something happen in the first 15 seconds now.

The real reason I'm not worried about rookies having this capability though, is because my team spends a lot of creative effort on designing and programming the drive system. Until FIRST supplies code for our particular flavor of omnidrive, I still get to keep my "job".

Scripting is not the answer to all programming problems. Teams with experienced programmers will still have an advantage over those that don't, but you'll need a pretty good programmer to have an advantage in autonomous mode.

Oh, and writing HTML isn't programming. (though at times, it maybe just as frustrating)

Yep, I'm elitist enough not to worry.

[CJO]

1. We have to actually get the new scripting module before it does any of us any good.

2.

You still need to figure out how to get your camera to home in on the vision tetra, track where you are in relation to the goal you're capping, and then raise up the tetra to cap it.

Actually, I think the camera in one of the coolest parts of the kit because it is multi-layer. It comes with on-board tracking software, but you can also completly re-write the camera to run more advanced functions, I have already come up with a way to do calibration without a PC, instead using a small lcd screen.