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Originally Posted by 1680Bruce
Here I would respectfully disagree with you.
In 20 some years in the field of technology based controls I have seldom learned much when every thing went right.
The best education came from experiencing the "trials and tribulations" involved in developing new knowlege and understanding.
Not that we need to see the semi-hysteria surrounding the bane bots transmission failures again, we did however, see some valid growth in how to tackle a serious problem from within the first community.
My vote is for the conservative publication of all development issues so that next january we'll have some idea of just what the questions are.
If history is an indicator, we'll always have someone who inadvertently repeats the errors of the past, but learns from it.
P.S. I'd like to just see the thing up close.
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I don't disagree with you.
The requirement of openness in the announcement and the NDA warnings seem at odds. This is only my first month mentoring, so I haven't seen the reported panics that mis/partial information have caused.
It's part pure curiosity and part self-preservation (a ton of new information and kickoff coming like a runaway train). My real concern is getting the technical documentation.
What does WPILib contain?
How do we interact with the I/O?
Is there a timed control loop?
Is it multi-threaded/multi-tasked?
What Wind River tools are we going to have?
What features will be in the FIRST specific LV that is being supplied?
If we at least know the structure of the default program and the abilities of the underlying system, we can start to consider approaches.
I realize that the beta program is probably a check of the documentation as much as of the hardware. The announcement said that shipments of the systems would start on Sept. 15th. so if it is going to be a serial process of release to the beta teams, update, and then release the remaining teams, the non-beta teams are probably not going to see the documents for 8-12 weeks.
The first rev of technical documents are usually full of ambiguities that the writers and the people close to the project don't see because the resolution is obvious to them. I would like to see all of the documentation available and a forum where we can start commenting and asking questions as soon as possible.