[qnetjoe]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

Just a few comments.

I wasn't involved in writing the rules for the contest, but I don't believe they say you have to write all the code in LabVIEW. Perhaps it would be more impressive to the judges to write some code in LV and some in C/C++ and integrate them to do things that are difficult using just one alone. But, a bit of advice -- using the word sucks in relation to a product from company X on the entry form for a contest about products from company X will probably not get you bonus points. You may be good enough to pull it off, but probably not.

Car thing: I wholeheartedly agree. Please do not treat this as a license to build stuff even as dangerous as FRC robots. No parachute deployment systems for skydiving. No robots throwing knives at blind-folded assistants. Use your brain. Use your common sense. Be careful.

LV comments: All languages, all of them, abstract and hide details, otherwise what are they worth. If it hides what you want, awesome. If it hides something you don't, not so awesome.

Tightly bound: LV is able to call DLLs or the equivalent on every platform. It incorporates .NET, ActiveX, even AppleEvents. It can call command scripts, communicate using TCP, UDP, serial, quite a bit of USB and other protocols. LV has better support for NI HW than that of other companies, but not surprising since, much of the HW support for NI products is done by the NI HW teams, and that is what most customers request. Where there are good open standards they are generally adopted and further open the platform. I'd be happy to discuss what you feel should be more open, but as suggested, on the other thread.

Greg McKaskle

You took the words out of my mouth. I hope that everyone sees this as an opportunity to push the limits of their understanding and learn new things.

After all FIRST is about education and not software training!