I would like to point out that fire to light bulb to nuclear power is a very poor analogy - nuclear power is the study of the atom, that was going on for many years and its development was sped up by increases in the speed of information exchange, same thing with the car. today we have reached to pinnacle of information exchange speeds and as such you can't bank on having that cut your R&D time down.
I am also a high school student and I agree that a programming competition would be a great idea.
I have to disagree that a robotics competition is a bad idea. I am in on the FIRST robotics team at my high school and have a lot of fun. robotics not only has the physical building of a robotic involved, but also includes programing the robot(in C), creating a web site, creating an animation to show what FIRST and your team are about and a lot more. Basicly, helping to create a FIRST robotics team gets many students with different interests together to help eachother out and during the competitions they can meet people from all over the world.
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I would like to point out that fire to light bulb to nuclear power is a very poor analogy - nuclear power is the study of the atom, that was going on for many years and its development was sped up by increases in the speed of information exchange, same thing with the car. today we have reached to pinnacle of information exchange speeds and as such you can't bank on having that cut your R&D time down.
I am also a high school student and I agree that a programming competition would be a great idea.
I have to disagree that a robotics competition is a bad idea. I am in on the FIRST robotics team at my high school and have a lot of fun. robotics not only has the physical building of a robotic involved, but also includes programing the robot(in C), creating a web site, creating an animation to show what FIRST and your team are about and a lot more. Basicly, helping to create a FIRST robotics team gets many students with different interests together to help eachother out and during the competitions they can meet people from all over the world.
In conclusion: GO FIRST robotics.