On the lack of innovation in software

Any closed loop control system can - and should - automatically account for and correct any imperfections.

Yes, but closed loop control systems are few and far inbetween, especially team specific ones and not the premade ones provided for the team.

at the end of the day, performance is what matters

That's the disparity between FIRST goals and team goals. It is so deeply embedded into the community to the point where I don't see it being reversed.

Stop generalizing an entire industry

Have you ever worked in software industry? Everywhere I've looked there are incompetent members of teams. It's a lurking problem in the computer science world as there is not a strict standard to education. That's for another discussion though.

Tell me the people developing Win10, Android L, iOS8, Mac OS, Ubuntu, etc, that they only care about being able to say they created an OS, and not about how the OS performs.

Microsoft and Apple are 2 of the big 4 in the computer science world. Everyone tries to land a job with them. They are prestigious companies that strive for quality all around because they know they can achieve it. They don't have incompetent developers. Their interviews are literally tests to prevent this.

Android and Linux are open source. Only people who care about the project will spend their free time contributing. Also, code is reviewed before being pushed.

Here is an excellent example of what I meant: http://www.thousandtyone.com/blog/EasierThanFizzBuzzWhyCantProgrammersPrint100To1.aspx

as well as

http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

This also brings up the topic of computer science != programming.

That's the downfall to FIRST I suppose. FIRST likes to claim that FRC students will be the leaders of their generation, when in fact 99.9% of FRC alumni weren't even the leader, socially or amiccadeally, of their class. The very brightest of students aren't in FRC, they are at ISEF.

We only now have a dedicated programming mentor, me, and I'm not even needed really, I'm just there for confirmation. The "programming" mentor when I was on the team was a EE from Boeing who made the programmers learn everything on their own, and they did.

We have only won 1 regional, and we were carried to victory as the last pick on the first seeded alliance back in 2009. We've come close to winning more, but fell short, and there is nothing wrong with that. The year I was most proud of the team was in 2012. We placed 39th out of 43 in St Louis and 44th out of 57 at Queen City. Why was I so proud? Our control system, what we learned, and how we didn't stop there. We continued to learn and in the end, it resulted in arguably our most successful year the following year, 2013, even though we didn't win a regional.

We aren't the best by any means. We always fall short in multiple aspects. We also don't test code for very long before bag and tag. In 2012, the vision program was finished 4 days before the REGIONAL.

Sure, we'd like to go to champs. But we aren't going to kick ourselves because we didn't qualify.

Again, that's where the disparity is. How I gauge a successful year in terms of software is how much we expanded our own personal abilities, not by silverware.

FIRST succeeds in its goal to an extent, but they are nowhere near optimal about it. Why is it that 2872 teams competed this year, yet the team numbers go up to 5400s? That's barely a 50% retention rate. Across 25ish years.

/r/FRC Thread Parent