[qnetjoe]

Doug has a great point there are alot of teams even at nationals that can only do a few lines of code. Before everyone here just complains, just remember that there is a growing divide between FRC teams.

For example, I have had PAY to mentor FRC teams for the last 5 years. Some of these school can't even afford wire. Plus there are teachers that just run a team for the stipend. Compare that to one team that I know that get 1.3 MILLION dollars a year, over 50 mentors and have there own 100,000 sq foot workshop, equipped with 30+ CNC machines (They also do a lot more than FIRST). This divide is not just in the financial realm, but also in # and quality of mentors/teachers, and access to resources. We need to realize this and work hard at creating a community so all teams can fulfill the vision of FIRST.

The new controller helps is a lot of areas. I have seen some of the best FLL programmers just get intimidated my the nature of C and decide not to pursue programming at the FRC level. One of the biggest benefits of the new controller is a similar and familiar interface across all levels of FIRST.

FRC hardware was becoming rather clickish. the ifi stuff does not scale to handle a lot of the sensors and buses that are out there (CAN anyone?). The new controller give us so much more and above all it gives us the ability to freely and easily adapt this to other challenges outside of FIRST. We need to give NI and FIRST a break and let them develop the new controller. IFI had years to perfect the controller and it was still far from perfect.