[Chris Hibner]

At this point, most of my complaints would be pretty nit-picky.

Overall I think the system is very good, and has potential to be great. Having the power pc on board is a big step up for FIRST. In the real world of embedded programming you have to worry a bit more about optimizing for a smaller processor, but I think it's good that people who are new to programming don't have to worry about stuff like that anymore.

I also think the LabVIEW option is a big step forward for FIRST. We were able to get an 8th grader to do about 75% of our tele-op software this year. I know that wouldn't have been likely with C++ or Java (let me clarify this - if you have a kid who's been programming on his own for years, that's one thing. But to take a middle-schooler with little to no programming experience and have them learn C++ enough to program the robot during the build season - very unlikely.)

Having said all of that, I think there are some BIG improvements that can be made to the LabVIEW hardware interfaces to make them more user friendly and intuitive. After you understand how the current interface works, it's pretty user friendly - but when I first saw it I found it to be very counter-intuitive. When I get some time I'll write some simple VIs to show an example of how I think would make it highly intuitive for first timers.