Programming dumbed down even more.

[Hypnotoad]

2012: we had a difficult autonomous. The robot had to not only aim at the fairly small target, but also judge distance to properly score. operators would also often need vision processing to aim, considering the small targets, and the not so great perspective that they get.

2013: things get a little simpler. The goal was wider, and frisbees flew straight, so there wasn't too much difficulty aiming. Many robots could do it with simple dead reckoning. Robots also had to pick up frisbees from the ground. Teleop vision processing also most likely slowed you down if it wasn't extremely optimized.

2014: shoot in the massive goal when it's lit up and drive forward.
The rest of the game is entirely up to the drivers.

Anybody see the trend? programming is getting easier and easier.

I don't work on robot programming anymore at meetings. There is no reason to. There is no program to work on since the robot doesn't actually need to be coded anymore. The joysticks have to go to the drive train and the buttons have to go to the other actuators. Maybe the main mechanism can be controlled by a state machine to make my life as operator a bit easier. Other than that there is very little to program. What's with this trend?