Advice- Too many Programmers?

[seg9585]

Keep in mind that not everyone on the programming team will actually be *coding*. Some will be working on logic flow and concept of operation, control documentation, configuration management, and autonomous mode planning. Others will be working advanced efforts such as custom game piece detection and interaction, robot autonomy (in both auto and teleop modes), etc.

Others will work on scouting apps and database design, website programming, etc.

We have about 30 students who want to join programming this year (surely this will weed out over time). Only a handful actually ever write actual low-level robot code.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by seg9585

Keep in mind that not everyone on the programming team will actually be *coding*. Some will be working on logic flow and concept of operation, control documentation, configuration management, and autonomous mode planning. Others will be working advanced efforts such as custom game piece detection and interaction, robot autonomy (in both auto and teleop modes), etc. Others will work on scouting apps and database design, website programming, etc.

Unfortunately, our experience is that very few of our students are ready to do high level tasks before they are ready to do coding. Do you have tasks/training that prepares team members for design and documentation before they are ready for programming? That would be a game changer for us.

[indieFan]

One more suggestion: Have your knowledgeable students mentor other teams in the area, as well as your own. Not all teams are lucky enough to have mentoring in programming.

[teku14]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Between the code that runs on your robot, your driver station/dashboard, your website, your scouting system, automating your pit checklist, off-line tools for generating autonomous mode scripts, off-line tools for visualizing logged data, etc. etc... "there is not enough to do" is never an excuse for bored programmers.

Amen

[JesseK]

My $0.02 - Cyber Competitions (red vs blue, white/grey/black hat, etc).

We have 130-ish 'programmers' in our overall program. Had to find something for them to do since they're all interested in applied STEM, but a few weeks of from-scratch robot just isn't enough
I'm not involved with that aspect of our program, but here's a link: https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/
edit - just noticed registrations are close - so you could sign up and start practicing for the exhibition rounds that may start just after FRC season ends.

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Between the code that runs on your robot, your driver station/dashboard, your website, your scouting system, automating your pit checklist, off-line tools for generating autonomous mode scripts, off-line tools for visualizing logged data, etc. etc... "there is not enough to do" is never an excuse for bored programmers.

This x1000.

[Wendy Holladay]

this is why i think FRC was wrong to remove the website and animation awards. that is programming, yes it is.

talk to some of your programmers about working on the team website.

or have some develop animations for your chairman's awards.

[mjcoss]

Like others have said, it's all about managing multiple subteams. A few kids on the main robot, some on the driverstation, others on web, IT infrastructure, pit management, scouting app, database, inventory system for team's parts, heck even an attendance system, a student tracking system (who has had what training, done what service projects, etc.). Lots of stuff to do some mission critical, others not so much.

Some kids are not going to make it in the programming group, and should be redirected to other aspects of the team. Some are going to be great, but need to be shown how to collaborate. Others need unlearn some self taught bad habits. This is where the mentors come in. Keeping everyone engaged is a challenge.

We've around 100 team members, and maybe a dozen students interested in programming. I've got lots to keep them busy, and a few other adult mentors that can help. Should be an interesting year.

[Citrus Dad]

1) Build and expand your scouting system. We're still making ours better and it takes at least 3 programmers it not more. See our latest white paper here.

2) Build and run a webcast system. Teams are producing much better webcasts than FIRST is doing. We did 3 of them 2 years ago; we didn't get the opportunitiies this year. We do 2-3 offseason events as well, and FLL/FTC events can be webcasted. That can take 2-4 students.

[LCJ]

My suggestion is to run many more programming projects that are not necessarily for the robot.

Off the top of my head, the programmers on Team Appreciate work on the following:

Zero Robotics (3-8 people) - Robotics competition that involves programming a robot to compete in zero-g environments. This year's competition

Team Website (2-5 people) - Building a professional website is a lot of work and there should be dedicated programmers that work on this. Building a clean, presentable website (like 254 or 148's) is a very useful skill to have after high school.

Scouting System (3-8 people) - We have tried making scouting apps to run on Androids, Apple products, and off of a laptop. There's a lot of work that can go into building a really good scouting system for your team.

Programming Helpers (any number) - These students learn how to code in a language that the team doesn't use so that they can help out newer teams in competition with their autonomous/drive code.

Hope the suggestions help!

[Arhowk]

My team's on the complete opposite end of the spectrum- I'm the only programmer (and the head electrical for that matter) with no programming mentor, but I'm just so bad at teaching kids that they get confused and decide to go to mechanical

Firstly, I think that you should start ALL students in robot programming for a few main reasons:

• It's the easiest programming in most of FRC. Teaching kids robot programming can help filter those who have interest in programming against those who just want to be around a computer, but also doesn't shy off the kids who really want to be programmers but don't want to get thrown into hardcore javascript day 1.
• It's the only thing needed by every team. Scouting is nice, website is nice, but you're going nowhere without a robot. If you teach kids web development and robot seperately and the robot programmers turn out to be mechanically focused than you have to teach the other programmers robot programming.
• It's hard to get this kind of experience outside of FRC. Anyone with a computer can build a website but the best kids can do for programming is just buying some $20 arduino kit. Managing code for a $5000 robot on a team of 20+ people is a tough experience to get elsewhere outside of an actual job.

Once you've filtered and sharpened a nice group of programmers (yes, every kid will try to enter as a programmer, its not as fun as they think) you can divide it elsewhere as other posters have said.

As to not be too off topic, "too many" shouldn't even be in your vocabulary! Just be sure to utilize them properly, don't just throw them in a room and tell them to code.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by axleAlex

Hello CD,
I apoligize for the longer side of posts but it needs to be addressed to prevent drama amongst our team.

*snip*
*snip*

Any ideas? If you have any questions, feel free to PM me or reply below.
Thank you

One thing I am seeing a lot of is "Websits yo!" One thing to keep in mind is that web site development is a need that exists outside of your robotics club (team? cult? pick your poison). Odds are someone in your school needs work done on a website, put out a school wide statement that you have programmers. You would be surprised what turns up.