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I like the closeness to the hardware of the current non-OS setup.
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I completely agree. Before I started programming for first, I never interfaced with the hardware directly. Sure high level code has its advantages, but I feel like our current RC forced me to learn the low level concepts I would never have approached should I have stayed inside an OS. I feel that working on such a low level presents its own sets of challenges and teaches great skills. For example, interrupts and timers are great tools to work with directly.
That said, it would be nice to have a
more powerful RC. Weather this means running a full blown operating system (go! linux! go!) or just having default code to match would be a non-issue to me as long as we still have open-ish access to low level operations.
The last thing I want to request is true object orientation. I don't think I have to explain myself here, but weather its a move from C to Obj-C or from C to Java,
Object orientation really does have its benefits.
I feel, however, that a more pressing issue (for me) would be that of an
IDE on linux/mac. FIRST Robotics is an organization of geeks (in an endearing way)! This means that of all the possible target audiences your software should apply to, this one has an abnormally high concentration of linux/mac users (half of our programming team does not use windows).
There are
so many ways to implement an
IDE across all the platforms.. Why should I need to have 20GB of VmWare (or parallels) on my computer to run the supported IDE?
This is probably for another thread though...
p.s. I have been eyeing the
Arduino project for a while. Its based on C and costs $34. Comes with USB onboard, open source, win/mac/linux, good documentation.. Not powerful enough for the next RC, but certainly to play with at home if you can't afford to risk breaking the team's RC!