Building Your Toolbox

Try It — How Many Copies Do You Have?

Open your projects from 12 onwards, one at a time, and count.

Now find out whether they match

Open the define turn right 90 stacks from two different projects side by side and compare them block for block.

Somewhere along the way you improved one of these — a better overshoot number, a cleaner stop. Which project has your best version, and do the others have it?

Your team has four people, each working on a different mission in a different project. One of them finds a much better turn. How does that reach everyone else?

Learn It — One Master Project

A library is a collection of ready-made pieces that any program can use. You have been using one since Project 1: the block shelf itself. Every block on it is somebody’s finished, tested, named work, handed to you so you never build it again.

Two shelves

The Toolbox project

Here is the fix, and it is a habit more than a feature. You build one master project — call it Team Toolbox v1 — that contains:

Then the rule that makes it work: every new mission starts as a copy of the Toolbox. Duplicate it from the project list if your app offers Duplicate; otherwise open the Toolbox and save a copy under the mission’s name. Either way, open the fresh copy and everything is already there — variables set, blocks on the shelf, waiting.

Name it like you mean it

One master, clearly named, and a version number that moves: Team Toolbox v1, v2, v3. Mission copies get mission names: M8 Dock Run, not Team Toolbox v2 copy copy. Five minutes of naming saves an hour of “wait, which one is real?”

Do It — Build the Toolbox

Step 1 — Gather your best

For each block, decide which project holds your best version — the one with the corrected numbers and the clean endings. Write it down before you copy anything.

Step 2 — Build Team Toolbox v1

New project called Team Toolbox v1. Under when program starts: every set block from your cards — motor card, measuring card, sensor card. Then rebuild each define stack, best version, on the canvas beside it.

Finish the hat’s stack with a single beep, so running the Toolbox proves it is alive without moving the robot.

• Every variable from my cards is set under the hat
• Every define stack is in, best version, and nothing mission-shaped anywhere
• Running it beeps and does nothing else

Step 3 — Duplicate and build from it

Make a copy of the Toolbox — Duplicate in the project list, or save a copy — and name it Toolbox Test. Open it — your whole shelf is waiting. Snap a tiny mission onto the hat: drive forward 12, turn right 90, grab.

• A duplicated Toolbox runs a mission using my blocks, with nothing rebuilt

Step 4 — Fix it once, watch it spread forward

Change your turn overshoot number in the master Toolbox — even by 1, just to trace it. Duplicate again into Toolbox Test 2 and check the number arrived.

Now open your old Toolbox Test and look at the same number.

Which copies got the fix, and which did not? Say the rule this proves.

Step 5 — Write the instructions

On paper or in your team notes, write the three team rules: where new missions come from, where improvements go first, and what the master is never used for. Hand them to a teammate and have them start a new mission using only what you wrote.

• A teammate started a mission from the Toolbox using only my instructions

Step 6 — Back it up

Copy the master one more time and name it Toolbox v1 BACKUP. Never open it. If the master ever gets wrecked — a mission built into it by accident, a define deleted — the backup is your way home.

• A backup copy exists and the team knows not to touch it

Score It — Checkpoint

No mission points this time. What you built is the thing that makes every future run faster to write.

My toolbox

Which project?

Can you do it again?

• I can explain the two shelves — the one that came with the app, and the one I fill
• My team has one master Toolbox, clearly named, with a version number
• Every new mission starts as a duplicate of the Toolbox
• Improvements go to the master first, and I know why old copies do not get them
• A backup exists and nobody builds missions in the master
• A teammate can use the Toolbox from my written instructions alone

Think about it

Nothing your robot does changed today, again. Project 9 was the same. What kind of work is this, if it is not making the robot better — and why does it keep winning you time anyway?

The block shelf that came with the app was somebody’s Toolbox once. What do you think their rules were for what got to go on it?

Your Toolbox rule spreads fixes forward but not backward. Real software teams have the same problem with old versions. What would it take to fix an old mission copy — and when is it not worth doing?

Next

One project left. Several missions still have a bonus that means nothing more than “now do that again” — and you are going to stop doing it by hand.

In Project 17 — Repeating Without Retyping, you meet the last loop.