# Introduction

Welcome to the FRC 167 Documentation! In writing these docs, our team has two main motivations:

With each graduating class, it seems like we lose lots of collective knowledge. This limits the success of the team in the future since members spend time relearning concepts and repeating mistakes of the past. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this effect by limiting the time veteran members have to train new members and robbing everyone of experience. Preventing this from happening will help our team become more competitive.

In addition, certain subteams on our team regularly have trouble effectively teaching new team members. For instance, the programming subteam struggles to teach new members how to code when lots of people come in with absolutely zero experience. This causes many new members to quit the team because they struggle to find a role for themselves. Fixing this will promote the long-term health of the team.

To solve these issues, we've created these docs. They are an ever-expanding record of how different parts of our team operate and what people need to know to succeed. The goal is to teach new members how to be useful on the team and to prevent knowledge from being lost when old members graduate.

Since this is primarily intended for internal use by team 167, there might be some sections that do not apply to other teams. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the content should be applicable to most FRC teams. So, if you'd like to use this as a resource for your team, feel free.

Whenever possible, chapters in these docs are self-contained. For instance, the [Java Basics](https://docs.iowacityrobotics.org/programming/java-programming) chapter doesn't rely on knowledge from any other chapters. In fact, it could be used by someone learning Java outside of an FRC context. However, a few chapters rely heavily on others. For example, knowledge of Java and the FRC control system is necessary for understanding the chapter on [FRC Programming](https://docs.iowacityrobotics.org/programming/how-to-solve-programming-problems). When it is the case that one chapter relies on another, it will be noted in the chapter overview.

We hope you find this resource useful! If you'd like to contribute, it is open-source. Check out the section on [contributing](https://docs.iowacityrobotics.org/contribute) for more information.


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