In my opinion, autonomous doesn't need to be made any easier for several reasons:
1. It is already as easy as possible while still remaining a learning experience. As others have mentioned, creating a simple autonomous mode in LabVIEW or Java can be done in a few minutes just by reading the documentation. WPILib is already so high-level; to make the robot drive you literally call the drive() method. What's next? The playThisYearsGame() method? Too bad those types of prepackaged solutions don't exist in the real world.
2. Something has to provide veteran teams with a challenge and give rookies something to strive for. Saying that every team not doing autonomous is a problem is like saying that every team not hanging from the bar is a problem, and we should provide a hang-from-the-bar module in the KoP. Because, you know, that way teams can focus on what they want their robot to do, and not worry about low-level details like nuts, bolts, and metal.
3.
FIRST is also about preparing students with real-world engineering skills and giving them an edge in the industry. There is no better way to do this than to give the students access to the very development packages professionals use. Stripped-down learning tools have their place (in classrooms, for example), but here in
FIRST, I believe we should try to stick with the professional tools as much as possible.
On my high school team, I went from absolutely no programming experience to expert knowledge of C++ and object-oriented programming in one season, precisely because I had to do it myself. Granted, I had a wonderful mentor to help me out, but once again, the mentor-student relationship is one of the core values of
FIRST. This is why I think the crop of "so easy a rookie can do it!" autonomous frameworks and initiatives that show up every season are misguided. It's wonderful that experienced teams wish to share their expertise with the community, but I think they should use that knowledge to release products intended to teach rookie teams about programming, rather than to do it for them.