arn’t they making it too easy?
theyre practicly handing us the code.
oh wait… they are handing us the code!
i dont like this, but i might not see the whole picture yet…
-Leav
Making your own wheel turn counters and all your own encoders and suff is half the fun. Heck we were excllent with our programming last year. But now all you have to do is say left pi over 2 radians. This is sersiouly gonna be too easy.
Well, I think they are handing us code because my thougts are that the game is going to need a lot of mechanical work because they are almost handing us all the needed code.
We had a scripting language that worked exactly like that last year. It took us a few weeks to refine it, but it worked nicely. I think everyone will be happy with the simplicity this allows - except those of us that developed it independently 
(once we finished the graphical interface, we would’ve made it more public anyway)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s the impression most of us got last year about the IR sensors and other small electronics. However, it turned out that IR was one of the least used features of the Kit because they were a pain in the butt to successfully code, especially when the math capabilities of the controller were less than stellar.
The scripting language will mean that MANY more teams will use the sensors instead of doing something like dead reckoning.
I for one welcome our new scripting overlords.
Dave 
I think thats what we may try this year… a graphical setup…
It will help us with some aspects of the programming yes but this will allow everyone to have an autonomous mode. Which can be good for rookie teams but still, making your own language is half the fun
This is going to make the basic programming very simple but I also allows teams to do alot more than before. Personally I am looking forward to seeing exactly how far we can push it. Also those of you who are good at programming can extend the ability of the scripting software so you can use it in years to come.
I can’t say that I mind too much, what with me being the most experienced programmer on the team, other than two of the mentors, and not being an expert on it myself. I think that with this, we won’t have to worry so much about how to make the program work, but what we want it to do. But of course, if you like a challenge, I suppose you could just write all the scripts yourself.
Yes programing abilities will be greatly extended…might be intersting, might be newbish
I like it. It gives you more time to come up with complex situations rather than spending a week figuring out mathematical complexities. Plus, you can worry less now about whether or not your robot ACTUALLY drives perfectly straight. It also makes life easier for the rookie teams that may not have the knowledge they need for previous FIRST programming. And, like Dave said, it let’s teams mingle, trade, and combine code for an even more astounding autonomous period!
I remember watching 67 last year at Nationals and wanting to know how they wrote all their coding. This enables the students that don’t REALLY speak programming to understand everything that’s going on. In essence, it gives everyone the ability to be a programmer.
This is real life. Nobody is going to pay you to write something thats already been done a hundred times. The challenge is to take all of this pre-existing code and do something useful with it. Believe me, I understand what you’re saying. Do you honestly think that NASA could have put those rovers on Mars if they wrote everything from scratch? Take what they give you, study it, and extend it. Its great to want to do it yourself, but while you’re coding and testing your math library in week three you could be refining some mind blowing autonomous code.
Guys, you havent even seen the new software. Wait until your kits get in, and try out the (new?) IDE.
All I have to say is… new program stuff is frickin sweet.
I think they’re giving us a hand with the programming because this is a strategy-based game. The robots and the programming don’t need to be all that complicated, but with six robots and only two minutes, strategy is everything.
Those jerks, trying to help rookies write autonomous code!
Edit: I’m feeling really, really depressed at the number of people taking this seriously.
I personally disagree with the decision to hand people the complex code in easy to use pieces. This might be because I am a little biased because I spent countless hours working on my own PID drive systems, and now it all seems useless. But, as for people saying that it mirrors real life in the fact that you are never going to make something from scratch, then you are right. But the fact is if you tried to mirror real life in every aspect, IMO, you would be drowning out one of the key factors that makes FIRST fun. In real life, they already have designs for articulation arms, or drive trains, but does FIRST give u them. No. So you can not apply the argument of saying it mirrors real life because you would run in to that problem.
I also think the argument that this mirrors real life can be discredited in another way also. Programming is a large part of engineering, if it was not they would not do it in FIRST. The idea is that you take some things that are already made and you build on it to complete the task. The code it takes to accompish the task does not just magically fall out of the sky, someone had to write it. I think a better approach would be to maybe have some very basic code to start rookie teams off and some really hard code that would be impossible for the average High School kid to figure out. This still allows room for complex problem solving that the programmers have to deal with. You want to be pushing the limits of technology by figuring out these problems.
There are more reasons I think this code library was not the best idea. Lets say last year a freshman joined the robotics team and fell in love with the programming aspect. Using C, a language used in real life all of the time will give the kid a better understanding of what the career of being a computer scientist would be life. He gets to walk in the realm of real life programming scenarios. Now with this new competition, a freshman can come into the team, and they may get a false sense of what programming really is. They may get an overly simplified look of what really is programming. All they see is the beginning instructions (Go forward, go backward, turn pi radians) and the end result. They have no idea what goes on in between.
I guess my feels can all be summed up in the fact that I think that though you are helping out rookie teams and leveling the playing field and that is great, but isn’t this putting more focus on the competition itself and not what you learn on the way. This gives rookies a chance to compete against veterans, but will they ever really learn the insides of a PID loop or what interrupts are. If it was not for having to figure all of the code out for myself, I know I wouldn’t have a clue either.
These are just my opinions, I don’t know the outcome, or how this will work out, and I don’t claim to.
I Love the new stuff they gave us. I’m pretty decent at programming but there are things that still allude me. I plan on reviewing the pid code to see exactly how it works. Now i will be able to get a handle on the concept. I will be looking at code that already works and not trying blindly to make code from scratch. If you know how it works why do you need to type the keys yourself?
I completely agree that the FIRST handing us all the code is a bad idea. It truely does take the focus off of learning a skill like programming. If I were a rookie trying to learn programming I would not learn much if I new all I had to do was use a supplied scripting language to tell the robot to travel 30mm and turn 4pi radians. I am also upset because I have been working on writting a scripting language and gui-frontend for non-programmers on my team to edit and write code for auotonomuos mode.
From what I understand you can still write the code the way you have in the past. For instance, if your PID loop works better than theirs, then use yours instead! The graphical interface may be able to take advantage of the scripting languange and become even more robust.
There are two parts to this discussion. First, those who love to code for the sake of coding (yes, it’s fun, challenging, frustrating and rewarding) and those who code for the sake of accomplishing a task! Different goals and both can now be accomplished.
Those who have implemented a cool feature in the past that may fit into a scripting language by all means write the new command so others can implement it their code; as a scripting element. This is just plain good software engineering; software re-use and abstraction are the two main principals that come to mind.
Now is the time for the hot-shot coders to step up and really show off their stuff and the wet behind the ears coders to pay close attention to whats going on!
Cheers,
Sean