Since you aren’t discussing rule changes, I don’t really understand what the point of this thread is. Should we all just go on a pointless witch hunt on an unspecified team because you disagree with the (totally legal) way they run their team? But seeing as it’s here, I might as well weigh in.
One of the teams I mentor as a VexU competitor has entirely new members, most of them have just moved into high school, which in New Zealand makes them 14 years old. These kids decided to build a flywheel, so they did. Then the problem came about of controlling it to actually hit the goal reliably, which has been a topic of hot discussion between experienced teams, veterans, and even master programmers like jpearman. What do you propose I do? Link these 14 year old kids the Wikipedia page on PID and tell them: “here is some programming that you might come across in a university honors degree, I’m sure you kids can pick it up in a day or two”? Or maybe I should tell them “just go back to a pushbot, maybe next years game will be something you can compete in without a mechatronics degree”. Clearly both of these options suck for all parties involved.
So what I did is write them a complete flywheel controller, I commented every line, wrote a paragraph on tuning each variable, and made it in a form that it would just slot neatly into their current code, and let them run wild with it. I had to figure out vex programming entirely on my own, and it took me 2-3 years to work out how to use PID effectively. These kids now know what it is, how to tune it, and when it should be used within half a season of starting, they also have an example to pull apart and learn from. I wish that someone could have given me that, but I didn’t have anyone that could. Now that I am the someone that can, I’m not going to just throw them under the bus and laugh when they lose. I’m sure some people will think that the better option would be for me to sit down and teach them as they write it, but A. they would struggle to follow what I was saying in real time anyway, this way gives them time to work out what it actually does at their own pace, and B. they now have to teach themselves to use it, which means it will stick much better than me regurgitating some tuning numbers at them. Finally, this also lets them be competitive as they learn, which is a heck of a lot more fun for them, much more likely to inspire them to enjoy engineering, raises the standard of the whole region, and makes my job much more fun (how much would I enjoy telling said team that they simply don’t have the experience to play this game?).
There are lots of teams in vex that compete for years, and never do any good at all, because no one is willing to show them how to do it better. We can see from the lack of results that these kids aren’t learning anything, and I’m amazed they have the strength of character to keep going when they can see that none of the people who are meant to be teaching them care if they actually do any good. When I started vex none of my mentors had any experience with the system either, but they didn’t just shut up and let us crawl blindly, they taught us everything they could and learned with us, and I can look at my results in Vex, engineering, and education in general, and tell you for a fact that I don’t regret having their input and support at my back.
If you want to throw your kids into a competition and see if they crash, that’s fine, but you can only learn from losing so many times. I’d rather teach them how to build a robot that can actually compete, and then let them work out themselves how to compete well by gaining experience. A good football coach doesn’t just sit on the sidelines and yell. A good driving instructor doesn’t just tell you what the steering wheel does then jump out. With kids who are brand new to robotics, you need to get your hands dirty too, otherwise how will the monkey see what the monkey should do?