Will code be required to be pasted into the notebook for review as stated below:
Or may it be printed and included in a three ring binder with the notebook? I realize it states it is required, but for our team last year that would have been 50+ pages of code at each tournament. If it is required, what is the purpose of gluing it into the notebook?
Thanks for the question.
When reading and applying the various rules in judging, please remember game rule <G2>, common sense always applies in the VEX Robotics Competition. This statement is included because it is impossible to comment on every scenario that teams may come up with.
That said, Common sense would dictate that not every line of code from every revision of a team’s program is going to end up in a team notebook. Unfortunately, the opposite is all too often the case. Judges are unable to find any code in an engineering notebook. The judges’ job of reviewing the teams’ work is further complicated when there aren’t many references to the hardware team working with the software team as part of the design process. Judges are left to assume that rather than developing the code in parallel with the physical robot, robot code was a last minute after thought. Teams that include documentation of code development as part of their notebook will paint a better picture for judges to evaluate their design process.
It is up to teams to determine how much code to include in a team engineering notebook. This will vary from team to team and robot to robot. What teams need to remember is that the judges are looking at the team’s robot design process and this including software. Teams should include enough code to communicate their design process to judges. Teams should record code development discussions and put examples of code development. There is no need to include every revision of code the team develops. For example, Key elements might include the definition of which sensors, motors etc. are assigned to which port or exceptionally innovative portions of their code.
An example of code not to include would the multiple versions of similar code that are created in a debugging process. In this case the team should simply record the issues encountered during the code generation and what was done to overcome them.
Teams may wish to keep all versions of their code in a team journal so as to track all of their code development.