How important is it to use Finish.vi and close everything?
Since I have been on the team, I have completely ignored it.
We’ve been running code without closing anything in the end, and I haven’t noticed any negative effects.
So is this fine, or should I really be closing all my references?
For our standard use case in FRC, Finish.vi never gets called, so in this one case it doesn’t matter. We have a rather abrupt way of switching off the power to stop our robots.
However, when you run into it again in college or at work it can become quite important to close down devices gracefully.
Finish.vi teaches you good habits for later in life.
I ignore it. It’s really just there for completeness. No actual robot cares about the shutdown case. Just power it down.
As mentioned, the Finish is there more to make you aware that doors which are opened somehow need to be closed. Fortunately, LV’s doors have springs on them.
What I mean by that is that if the library author registers things correctly, the LV editor will close down file, TCP, and other I/O sessions for you if you don’t do it. It doesn’t do this until the program terminates, and that is probably fine for FRC.
Unless there is a bug in the I/O libraries, the sessions will be closed just after the program terminates rather than in Finish.
Greg McKaskle