A lot of people seem to appreciate Kamen for FRC so I would like to offer my alternative experience: I enjoyed the comradery that came with my high school robotics club, but man I did I absolutely hate the actual competitions. Firstly, being fairly experienced at programming meant that I wasn't doing anything interesting. They tried to make computer vision a focus, but autonomous mode never lasted long enough for it to ever matter in point values.
Secondly, it's hardly "competitive". The people that win these competitions are the people from the richest neighborhoods. When I competed in the Bay Area pretty much every regional was won by the cheesy poofs. Why? They literally got NASA Ames to build them their robot.
Thirdly, the actual games are incredibly stupid. My first year in highschool the competition was just soccer. It was a simple, well established, competitive game, and the tournaments were fun for it. Every year subsequent had a game way more ridiculous than the last year's.
Many times agreed. I'm fairly sure the computer vision stuff was pushed by NI because heavy sponsorship. And one of the recent games, Aerial Assist, was actually fun... because it was focused on the interaction between robots and teamwork between them, and because even a Kit-O-Parts robot with nothing else on it was a valuable asset when driven correctly.
FRC was fun because of the people. Not because of FRC.
I'm going to second your comment. My experience in FRC has only been worthwhile because of the people I've met. I suppose it's a form of networking, but quite legitimately having a team that drives for one goal together, not in either a "corporate" or "anti-corporate" but rather in a "this is cool" way, is inspiring.
I have to agree with you but as someone who was on a small team with basically no mentors, the amount we learned by having to do all the hard work ourselves was amazing. Really wish we didn't run out of funding my senior year.
