Is your team ready ?

[VIKotic Dave]

TEAM 5920 is excited and ready for the 2017 Challenge.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by VIKotic Dave

TEAM 5920 is excited and ready for the 2017 Challenge.

I don't think anyone is truly ever ready

[mwmac]

"Chance favors the prepared mind..."

[Type]

There is always so much more you can prototype before season, so much more you can practice and so much more you can learn! I think each sub team could have another 2 months and not truly be where we want. Programmers made the leap to C++ this year and could use more time to learn. Business team is still in the process of finding us a potential build site due to a possible eviction (our sponsor's building got sold so it is owned by different people). Myself and a mentor (build team) recently set up and repaired a roughly 50 year old Miller TIG welder, creating a redneck water cooler (55 gallon barrel with a small little water), so there is so much more practice we could use to actually refine our aluminum welding skills. If you've TIG welded aluminum, you understand it's not the simplest thing to do, especially on a 50 year old machine

All in all, I'm pretty sure the team is hyped! This is finally the water game year because ya know, it takes water to make steam

[NerdyCharmax]

Our team typically does very little pre season prep, just new programmer training and teaching tool safety. We will however all be coming together tomorrow for the reveal and, yes, we are all tremendously excited!!!

[DevOrc]

Originally Posted by Type

Programmers made the leap to C++ this year and could use more time to learn

May I ask why your team jumped from C++ from what I assume is Java?

[marshall]

Nope.

[mrnoble]

Nnnnnno

[Dan Waxman]

Originally Posted by DevOrc

May I ask why your team jumped from C++ from what I assume is Java?

Not the same person, but my team went from C++ to Java last year (so other way around if they started on Java). We did this for a few reasons: (1) There seemed to be more material online for people to learn from, (2) I personally feel it's easier to teach to a complete beginner, and (3) it aligns with AP CS curriculum, which is just sorta a bonus because students don't have to bounce around between the two every day in class then in the lab.

However, I think it's more likely they moved from LabView to C++. A lot of teams are originally on LabView because their programmers can't totally program prior to the season and decide there's not enough time to learn a language which has a much larger learning curve for a beginner (not to say that's why all LabView teams are on LabView though). I know of a lot of teams that decide during an offseason or when they gain a programming mentor they might not have had to move to a more "conventional" programming language, which I personally think is awesome. I view LabView the same way I view GRIP, where it's an amazing tool if you just want to get things done quickly or don't have the proper tools for the alternative, but personally feel the learning experience of using Java/C++/Python is a lot greater.

Hope that wasn't coming across as a diss of LabView or teams that use it, I think it's great if you use it and hold nothing against it. Just feel it's awesome when teams move to languages that are more widely used in industry that present their own issues which you have to figure out.

[Type]

Originally Posted by DevOrc

May I ask why your team jumped from C++ from what I assume is Java?

Due to having a small team in the past, and nearly a rookie team last year, we used LabView to make programming simple. My father who is the programming mentor does coding for Apps and such, and strongly disliked LabView (along with our programmers), so we went to Java over the summer. A couple months back, we attended a conference hosted by Stryke Force (2767) and they talked about how Java made it more difficult for some things due to the garbage collector. Although there was other reasons, the team decided to switch to C++ since some of the members were familiar with the C language. That is as far as I know, I am not on that sub-team so I am not sure the other reasons.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

This is probably the MOST prepared we have ever been.
That said, NO we are not ready.

Do we have much of a choice tho?

[brokoski]

A lot of Georgia FIRST got snowed in this weekend, and we were definitely not ready for kickoff events to be cancelled. : (

[ctt956]

I was ready, but then a snowmageddon came and Kickoff Cancellation threads kept coming, and...

Can we just delay Kickoff for maybe a week?

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by ctt956

Can we just delay Kickoff for maybe a week?

Unless we move all the competitions (including CMPs) a week to the right as well, .....................................NO!

[Donut]

No. One does not just "be ready" for FRC build season.